Introduction
Personalized insurance through broker service is one of the most valuable markets in Belgium. A broker works as a mediator between insurance companies and end-customers, in a way that brokers collect all the obtainable data from all insurers to provide the best possible insurance policy for their client. Vivium, as one of the biggest insurers in Belgium, plays an important role in enhancing the standard of living by providing comprehensive and personalized insurance policies at the right price.
On their path of enhancing and modernizing core IT systems to better respond to market needs, Tacta’s crossfunctional team of developers, architects and analysts was employed by Vivium as a support / nearshoring team in a long-term project.
The main scope of the project was exposing Vivium’s complex internal logic of calculating insurance via APIs (Application Programming Interface) so it could be easily integrated in brokers’ platforms and in that way make the data more comprehensive for brokers to use. Developing APIs vs using legacy systems is the future of digital product development and it also means setting up a great innovation strategy that is more adaptable to market changes.
Challenge
A software system's API clearly outlines how other software will interact with it (or its component). Scaling market reach, reducing time to market, flexibility, and innovation are all advantages of using an API. In this case, however, the main challenge was exposing APIs, and the data, and make them adaptable to all users.
Another challenge was to continuously react to the changes in what the API needs to accomplish which, understandably, advance over time because the insurance laws and regulations change as well as business needs.
Solution
Since Vivium and Tacta have a strong mutual partnership, we played a big role early on in business decision making. This means that because we were engaged in business analysis and making the concept together from the start, we had a better insight in what the client wants to accomplish with the API and therefore it was easier to make a tailor-made dynamic API solution for their specific needs.
As per client’s request, for the back end, we used well proven Java and Spring boot framework, while for the front-end we used React, and MuleSoft Anypoint for API orchestration.
Results
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the main benefit for the client was that we enabled them competitive advantage with quality APIs that are flexible and easily integrated
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innovation strategy based on APIs vs legacy systems makes our client more adaptable to market changes
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a future-proof base system for scaling APIs
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stable and easily maintanable APIs
Facts and figures
