After three years introducing streamlined technology, QBE’s performance has “increased tremendously” with almost no outages, Head of technology for Data, Advanced Analytics and Integration Shrenik Dagli says.

Now he’s urging a standard interface, similar in concept to open banking, to be adopted across the insurance industry.

Insurers have “some way to go to reach that level of standardisation and maturity across the industry,” Mr Dagli says in online presentation hosted by integration and API platform provider MuleSoft.

QBE has transitioned to a cloud platform and Mr Dagli says that with a centrally managed application program interface (API) strategy, much faster integration in adding a new region or vendor could be achieved.

“There’s a huge push to take this to the next level,” says Mr Dagli, who is based in New York.

“Here’s the core insurance APIs that almost any insurance company would use. What would it take for us to take the lead and say, ‘Let’s standardise these across the industry; let’s work with the different partners and organisations to come up with a common strategy?

“We have been able to integrate very, very quickly, especially in the claims space with a lot of our excellent partners, which has improved our customer satisfaction in a very big way.”

He says Uber, Amazon and Netflix have reset customer expectations through seamless, highly personalised services which people now want to see in other industries. This is forcing insurers to modernise and replace their core legacy systems.

IAG NZ lead engineer Derk Henderson told the online MuleSoft conference that APIs “are central to platform rationalisation and understanding of an organisation’s data”.