InsurTechTalk: The next modernization wave: why speed to integrate is becoming the new bar

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As insurers rely more heavily on external vendors, the ability to integrate systems efficiently is mission critical. Application programming interfaces (APIs) have become essential tools for connecting core systems to specialized providers for payments, data enrichment, communications and compliance – payments being the highest-risk integration in the stack. With business needs evolving rapidly, API-powered integrations have become a priority for technology leaders who seek efficient workflows and reliable services within insurance operations.

 

Security remains a top priority as insurers open systems to external access. Effective API safeguards involve OAuth2.0 for user authorization, mutual TLS for encrypted connections and carefully scoped access tokens to enforce least privilege permissions for partner platforms. The AI revolution depends on talking to systems in an open standard and Model Context Protocol (MCP), “the USB-C of AI,” is in fact a translation layer to APIs.   

 

How an integrated payments system changes customer and staff experience 

Digital transformation in insurance started with core systems – policy issuance speed and claim cycle time have already been improved via digitalization, and the focus is now moving downstream to billing and payments. This is inevitable as the clients of insurance companies benchmark the smoothness of insurance payments against their experience in other, more advanced sectors and clunky payment experiences are also in sharp contrast with the ease they already experience when filing claims. Whether insurers should go on with integration is no longer a question.

 

The question is how much it will cost to the team and whether the solution should be bought as a core system or from a payments provider. Marketplace models can answer those questions, and technology partners can help with choices regarding configuration and the speed of the roll-out – fast deployments can be completed within one planning cycle, while slower ones will need to be taken into consideration in the next cycle as well.  

 

The partnership between Duck Creek Technologies and InvoiceCloud delivers an integrated digital bill payment solution for property and casualty insurers, embedding InvoiceCloud’s SaaS payment platform directly into the Duck Creek Payments Marketplace. For carriers, it means that more payment options appear in their portals, as well as faster time-to-value and lower deployment risk as the core needs no replacement.

 

The integration technology and the partnership also ensure that the providers as external partners won’t point fingers at the insurer’s legacy system. Where AI can bring value to the policy-to-claim chain is delinquency prevention, while it can also enhance overall efficiency, by, for example, freeing up time for service agents. In terms of billing and payments, AI earns its keep in high volume tasks, flagging payment failures and personalizing payment options. During a well run go-live of an integrated payment system, customers don’t experience any interruptions, while automated workflows liberate carrier staff from manual workarounds and most of the escalations, which customers can now sort out in a self-service flow.  

 

What staff will experience following implementation, however, is that they have more training options, monitoring and service support. There may be some internal barriers to the adoption of these systems such as sponsorship and buy-in. To avoid those, it’s key to identify a clear business case for integration, the business value the system will generate, as well as to assess business impact. You also need a single accountable person for the project and a change in the mindset of the new system’s users. Filing a claim has a high churn risk, but that is also the moment when a carrier can actively build loyalty rather than just passively avoiding losing its clients.  

 

The panel’s advice 

• With the Duck Creek-InvoiceCloud integration, two products will behave as one with a unified front.    
• Don’t bolt on AI to the payment experience as a chatbot wrapper.  
• While customizing standardized solutions, make sure you are in touch with Duck Creek and InvoiceCloud subject matter experts.  
• Understand the full cost of implementation and change before embarking on a payments transformation project.