Aside from a high regulatory barrier and the significant capital investment required, another reason the insurance industry has resisted serious disruption for so long is that a lot of the way things work are hidden behind closed doors, jargon, based on who you know in the industry.
In the UK at least, even the pseudo-standard industry APIs they use (based on EDI, EDIFACT to be specific) are hidden behind a licencing organisation (Polaris) owned by the ABI (the industry body) that charges per transaction. It's a cartel.
If it were in the future I'd describe it as dystopian.
In the US they use X12, which is an XML-based version of EDI, which was published publicly by ANSI at least.
Aside from a high regulatory barrier and the significant capital investment required, another reason the insurance industry has resisted serious disruption for so long is that a lot of the way things work are hidden behind closed doors, jargon, based on who you know in the industry.
In the UK at least, even the pseudo-standard industry APIs they use (based on EDI, EDIFACT to be specific) are hidden behind a licencing organisation (Polaris) owned by the ABI (the industry body) that charges per transaction. It's a cartel.
If it were in the future I'd describe it as dystopian.
In the US they use X12, which is an XML-based version of EDI, which was published publicly by ANSI at least.