EGI API Gateway is quick, secure & smart
Ravi Lalwani: What is the business strategy behind launching an open API gateway? What is the expected impact on existing customers and new customers?
Shanai Ghosh:
Our open API gateway is the first of its kind by any general insurance company in India. The objective of the API platform is to bring transparency. And enhance the experience for insurance partners who seek to access our services to provide a seamless journey to customers. The gateway will offer quicker integration with EGI services and policies with a shortened integration cycle, both time and cost-wise.
We want to create a robust platform for customers focusing on the motor and health ecosystems to offer compelling value and the most convenient experience. We recognize the importance of collaborating with partners in these ecosystems to build this platform. The API gateway allows faster integration with multiple partners at the same time to help us realize their aspirations.
What partners do you expect to leverage API the most?
The open API gateway has developed to strengthen the digital capabilities of our partners. And to facilitate complete digital collaboration with them. Technology plays a vital role in reaching out to the new age consumer. Any third-party developer eager to harness the power of digital technology would be our partner and will benefit through this integration.
Briefly describe the technology discussions and planning that went into this project?
Open APIs are much needed to help our partners to integrate easily with our products. Critical areas to investigate while developing this project were regarding security, maintaining robust and up-todate documentation as APIs go through versioning changes, and thirdly, ensuring that APIs perform at scale with superior response times. In this regard, having proper API usage monitoring was particularly
Shanai Ghosh, Executive Director & CEO, Edelweiss General Insurance, reveals details about the launch of the industry-first open API Gateway and its benefits:
important to ensure a good experience visà-vis the API consumers. Our teams have diligently look at all the above aspects and continue to innovate further.
API portal is intended to enable quick and hassle-free integration with our partners. We mustkeepaclosewatchontheoveralltimetaken for integration, with as minimum intervention needed as possible. Subsequently, our teams also monitoring the API usage, to ensure that there are no challenges in successfully consuming the APIs.
Has it been developed by your in-house team or outsourced? If outsourced, then who were your technology partners?
The gateway has been conceptualized and developed by us in-house. At EGI, we heavily leverage cloud technologies, and, in that light, the API Portal has developed on top of the AWS API Gateway. We have developed REST API wrappers for core system APIs. We are also continuously developing and releasing new APIs built using JavaScript frameworks (Express, Nodejs). We utilize various API testing tools for ensuring performance and security.
Have you built any precautions against misuse? How are you ensuring data security? Please describe briefly.
We have been investing heavily in developing the key ingredients for any technology-driven organization, namely the people, processes, and infrastructure. Selecting the right infrastructure is critical to ensuring that our APIs remain secure from external threats.
Access to APIs and therefore data is secured through multiple layers, through the gateway, access tokens, and throttling configurations to prevent misuse. Access is provided to genuine partners controlled through an SOP is driven sign-up process.
We also have a well-defined process for ensuring security. Security comprises of process, people, and infrastructure. Our security team is an integral part of the overall architecture design and is not an after-thought.
What are your plans on leveraging data analytics and AI?
Our key focus areas include bringing in more i nnovation through digital transformation projects, creating an ecosystem. We and our partners to leverage our technology initiatives, investing in technologies towards customer experience in every stage of policy lifecycle from policy issuance to servicing, and achieving cost efficiencies in operations through sensible use of new technologies in AI.
We are developing a strong data architecture aligned with our goals to usher the innovative use of new-age technologies in AI and ML. It will help us to create a strong foundation, scale and ensure that our customer experience remains top-notch.