The Open Insurance Initiative: Launch Announcement

Today sees the public release of the whitepaper of The Open Insurance Initiative.

The insurance industry now has an initiative for the development of an international standard for open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) leading to an ecosystem inspiring fast innovation.

“The white paper of The Open Insurance Initiative provides an overview of the processes and strategies that will enable policyholders to securely share their insurance related data with third parties” explained Fouad Husseini, founder of The Open Insurance Initiative.

The scope of the initiative is two-fold. The first, establishes a detailed framework for the API standard allowing data to securely flow between insurers, their customers and third-party service providers. The second, recommends and specifies the main aspects involved in data mobility, enabling easy and secure access to private data and its sharing.

The initiative will employ a collaborative and open approach relying on a community of developers and financial services experts to conceive the first iteration of an open API standard for the global insurance sector.

Fouad explains that, “a global standard will help reduce the substantial resources required by insurers in developing their APIs. Equally as important, third party developers will enjoy an always up to date and well-documented standard, consistent design, properly versioned and visible APIs enabling efficient, easy and secure flows of data”.

The project elicits participation and encourages the founding of working groups at national levels to boost sharing of resources and see the initiative succeed as an open source project. System architecture, API experts, website designers, content editors and cyber security specialists are encouraged to join the initiative.

For more information about the initiative and to download the white paper, visit www.openinsurance.io