Blogs

We Know How Hard Data Ingestion Can Be, We’ve Been There.

Written by Charlie Rock | Sep 26, 2023 1:40:05 PM

Having been involved in the Insurance industry for over 15 years, particularly in the DA space, initially from the broker side, analysing and sending bordereaux to insurance companies, then on the carrier side as the receiver of bordereaux data which needed to be ‘ingested’ into an application, it is apparent there has been surprisingly little progress from when I first started out my career – at least, until distriBind arrived.  

We rely too much on what the agent/coverholder sends us on trust, without too much push back from the carrier. And understandably, I think as part of doing business and increasing premiums, carriers rely on their MGAs when delegating. The lack of data visibility here makes it difficult to perform portfolio analysis. But this causes issues when trying to validate that data or handling claims, and this problem often starts when trying to ingest the data in various formats or with varying terminology.

One of the problems I used to experience was where applications were too ‘rigid’ and constrained by everything being sent in sequence, when this just isn’t the way DA works. Files can be sent out of sequence, risk transactions can be sent out of sequence, and in all honestly, anything in DA can be sent in out of sequence. What happens when a file gets sent out of sequence? All the files have to be backed out and reloaded. What happens if a risk transaction gets sent out of sequence? All the risks have to be backed out and reloaded, I think you see where I’m going with this…  

It’s problems like this, that distriBind is designed to solve. It doesn’t matter if a file or a risk transaction is sent in the right sequence, using our ingestion process and automatic resequencing of risk transactions, distriBind will give you the accurate and most up to date position of that risk or claim, with a clear audit trail. 

Using the tools in our configuration, we can ingest any document type, whether you send a risk using an API, a premium using a PDF and a claim using an excel spreadsheet, distriBind will bring normality and structure to that data, so it is reportable in one common standard.  

Our platform is designed for messy data, different formats and all those things you find in the real world. Some examples of how we do that: 

  • Expressions: if data is not provided, we can create that data for you when ingesting; 

  • Transformation: if data is being provided incorrectly, we can transform that data on ingestion; 

  • Defaulting: if data is not provided but we know the constant, we can default that data on ingestion; 

  • Synonyms: we know when two different headers mean the same thing. 

Ultimately, using our configuration tool gives us the ability to ingest data consistently, in any form and sequence data correctly to give users the confidence that a risk, premium or claim is in the correct ‘state’.  

 

Want to know more? Download our brochure today!