API Development in Munich

Insurance / Reinsurance and Specialty Markets

A Munich-based global reinsurer (EUR 45B GWP, operating in 80 countries, 750 cedant relationships, 15,000 active treaties) needed an API platform to modernise its cedant data exchange, automate treaty administration, and enable digital distribution of reinsurance products. (1) Cedant data exchange was manual: bordereaux (detailed premium and claims data from cedants) arrived as Excel files attached to emails — 12,000 bordereaux files per quarter, each requiring manual validation, transformation, and loading into the reinsurance administration system. Data quality issues (format inconsistencies, missing fields, calculation errors) affected 35% of bordereaux — each error requiring back-and-forth email exchanges with cedants averaging 8 days to resolve. (2) Treaty administration was document-based: treaty contracts, amendments, and renewals were managed as Word documents and PDFs. Treaty terms (layers, limits, retentions, profit commissions, sliding scale commissions) were manually entered into the administration system from contract documents — a process that took 4-6 hours per treaty and generated a 3% error rate that caused incorrect premium calculations. (3) Claims notification was slow: cedants notified the reinsurer of claims through email — with loss advices arriving days or weeks after the original loss event. For catastrophe events, the reinsurer could not assess aggregate exposure in real-time because claims data arrived in batches over weeks and months. (4) Distribution was relationship-dependent: placing reinsurance involved extensive broker intermediation — brokers managed the placement process through emails, phone calls, and in-person meetings. No digital platform existed for cedants to directly request quotes, compare reinsurance options, or bind coverage. Smaller cedants particularly struggled with the relationship-heavy process. (5) Regulatory reporting was labour-intensive: Solvency II reporting required detailed reinsurance data aggregation — every treaty, every cedant, every claims reserve — formatted per BaFin and EIOPA specifications. The quarterly reporting process consumed 6 weeks of analyst time and frequently required corrections.

We built a comprehensive reinsurance API platform over 14 weeks. (1) Bordereaux API: standardised API for cedant data submission — cedants submitted premium and claims data through structured API calls rather than Excel files. Data validation: real-time validation at submission — field format checks, referential integrity (policy numbers matching treaty records), mathematical verification (premium calculations, loss ratios), and completeness checks. Errors caught at submission rather than discovered weeks later during manual processing. Transformation engine: APIs accepting data in cedant-native formats (each cedant had different column layouts, naming conventions, and calculation methods) and transforming to the reinsurer's canonical format — eliminating the manual transformation step. Batch and real-time: large historical bordereaux submitted through batch API (async processing with status callbacks), while monthly and event-driven updates used real-time API calls with immediate validation. (2) Treaty API: digital treaty management — treaty creation (structured treaty terms entered through API — layers, limits, retentions, commissions, and special conditions represented as structured data rather than contract language), amendment processing (treaty modifications submitted through API with version control and audit trail), renewal API (automated renewal processing — previous year's treaty terms loaded as baseline, modifications applied, and renewed treaty generated), and calculation engine (premium, commission, and profit commission calculations executed through API — eliminating manual calculation errors). (3) Claims notification API: real-time loss notification — cedants reported claims through API calls immediately after the loss event, with structured data (loss date, type, estimated amount, policy details) rather than free-text email descriptions. Aggregate exposure: real-time aggregate loss tracking across all cedants and treaties — during catastrophe events, the reinsurer could monitor aggregate exposure as claims notifications arrived, rather than waiting weeks for complete data. Reserve management: claims reserve updates through API — cedants updated reserve estimates through structured API calls with supporting documentation. (4) Digital placement API: quote request (cedants submitted structured risk information through API — the platform generated quote proposals based on the reinsurer's appetite, pricing models, and capacity), binding (API-based coverage binding with electronic signatures and immediate treaty document generation), and capacity management (real-time visibility into available capacity by line of business, geography, and risk type — enabling automated underwriting for standard placements). (5) Regulatory reporting API: automated Solvency II data aggregation — treaty, premium, claims, and reserve data aggregated from the API platform's structured data rather than assembled from multiple systems. BaFin reporting: QRT (Quantitative Reporting Template) generation through API — formatted per EIOPA specifications. EIOPA data exchange: direct API submission to the EIOPA reporting portal — replacing manual upload processes.

Bordereaux processing: submission-to-booking time from 3 weeks (manual processing) to 2 hours (API with real-time validation). Error rate: from 35% (requiring 8-day resolution cycles) to 4% (caught at submission, resolved in real-time). 12,000 quarterly bordereaux files replaced by 48,000 structured API submissions (more frequent, more granular data). FTE reduction: 18 bordereaux processing analysts redeployed to value-added analytics roles. Treaty administration: treaty booking time from 4-6 hours to 35 minutes. Error rate from 3% to 0.2% — premium calculation accuracy improved by EUR 28M annually (corrections to previously undetected errors). Renewal processing: from 3 weeks to 3 days per renewal cycle — enabling more capacity for negotiation and relationship management. Claims: notification time from days/weeks to real-time. During a major European flood event, the reinsurer had 85% of claims data within 72 hours (from 4-6 weeks previously) — enabling faster reserve setting and regulatory notification. Aggregate exposure visibility: from 6 weeks post-event to real-time during events. Digital placement: 120 cedants adopted the digital placement platform within 12 months (from 750 total relationships — predominantly smaller cedants who valued the streamlined process). Digital placements: EUR 2.1B in GWP placed through the API platform. New cedant acquisition: 45 new cedant relationships established through the digital platform (smaller insurers who previously could not access this reinsurer due to the relationship-heavy placement process). Regulatory: Solvency II reporting from 6 weeks to 5 days per quarter. Zero reporting corrections required in the four quarters following implementation (from an average of 3 corrections per quarter previously). Annual value: EUR 85M (bordereaux efficiency — processing cost reduction and faster data availability enabling better risk decisions), EUR 62M (digital placement — new GWP from expanded cedant access and faster placement), EUR 28M (treaty accuracy — premium calculation corrections), EUR 18M (claims management — faster reserve setting and reduced IBNR volatility), EUR 12M (regulatory efficiency — reporting automation and eliminated corrections) = EUR 205M. Development cost: EUR 420,000. Payback: under 18 hours.