bolttech: Delivering plug and play technology solutions with Apigee
About bolttech
bolttech is an international insurtech with a mission to build the world’s leading, technology-enabled ecosystem for protection and insurance. bolttech serves customers in 30 markets across North America, Asia and Europe. With a full suite of digital and data-driven capabilities, bolttech powers connections between insurers, distributors, and customers to make it easier and more efficient to buy and sell insurance and protection products.
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Contact usWith Apigee and Google Cloud, bolttech is creating connected ecosystems, distributing common services and information digitally and forging partnerships to enhance products, services, and developer experience.
Google Cloud results
- Delivered a self-service platform that enables internal developers to explore, select and try common services
- Created a thriving developer ecosystem by enabling the development of APIs with genuine business utility
- Provided a seamless integration experience with bolttech partners across a range of geographies
Rapidly improving integration time for APIs and common services by at least 2x
New technologies, changing consumer expectations and transformed business models are giving new players opportunities in the typically traditional, conservative insurance industry. bolttech, an international insurtech business launched in early 2020 that aims to build a leading, technology-enabled ecosystem for protection and insurance, believes the sector lags behind most others in embracing trends such as hyperconnectivity.
David Lynch, Group Chief Technology Officer at bolttech, says that hyperconnectivity proves the agility, extensibility and ease of integration that helps industries create ecosystems, distribute products, services, and information digitally and forge partnerships with other businesses to enhance products, services, and customer experiences.
"As we approach a hyperconnected future, application programming interfaces (APIs) and digital products that are super-fast and ultra-simple to integrate are no longer just nice-to-haves," says David. "We are entering an era where insurance and protection products can be embedded and sold anywhere, at any point of the customer journey, and through any channel."
"Google Cloud has played a critical role in arming us with an E2E API management suite to build, test and run services on the cloud at ever-increasing speed and scale. bolttech’s API connectivity is a key differentiator in creating the world largest technology enabled ecosystem for protection and insurance."
—David Lynch, Group Chief Technology Officer, bolttechHyperconnectivity is just one of many complementary and connected trends that insurance businesses must accommodate. For example, businesses must consider adapting risk management approaches to accommodate the fact that customers live and work in a rapidly digitalized world. bolttech is embracing the opportunity this presents.
"We see opportunities to custom design protection products for almost any transaction, service or flow," says David. "No longer can insurance product manufacturing take weeks or months." bolttech applied its digital and data-driven capabilities in 2020 to launch COVID-19 coverage plans in just a few days and David expects to see more examples of customized, fast-to-market products designed around new business models and rapidly-changing customer needs.
Connecting seamlessly to the bolttech ecosystem
"Google Cloud has played a critical role in arming us with an E2E API management suite to build, test and run services on the cloud at ever-increasing speed and scale. bolttech’s API connectivity is a key differentiator in creating the world largest technology enabled ecosystem for protection and insurance," he says. "For any business today, the speed of adaptation and execution is perhaps one of the biggest competitive weapons a business can have and at bolttech, we're aiming to move at ‘bolt’ speed in everything we do."
bolttech’s technology strategy entails enabling both supply side insurance carriers and demand side business partners to connect seamlessly to its exchange so that these partners can in turn provide insurance and protection products to their customers.
The business reviewed API management solutions that could provide a superior integration experience with its partners across Asia, Europe, and the United States.
"We undertook a detailed solution selection process to evaluate various solutions available in the market and subsequently ran some experiments based on our architectural direction to help select the solution that best aligns with our business strategy and priorities," explains David.
The business required the selected API solution to enable teams to deliver easily consumable APIs that can enable developers to build and configure new customer experiences. Bolttech’s developers build and maintain cutting edge applications and web assets leveraging a developer portal and self-serve onboarding capabilities, including registration, obtaining keys, accessing dashboards, and discovering new APIs.
The solution also needed to support growth in traffic – including increases in the number of API calls and the number of APIs being subscribed to or authorized on the platform, driven by a strong devsecops culture that continuously monitors, improves and drives value through APIs. The solution also had to support a growing number of products sharing the APIs. The bolttech engineering team focuses on building APIs that matter to the business and in doing so, unlocking valuable data from back end systems that is frequently reused to build services, new applications and product features that drive value.
Furthermore, the business needed a solution that could promote a thriving developer ecosystem. "When APIs deliver valuable business utility, developers are empowered to deliver at speed and drive value for both the developer and the API provider," explains David. Finally, bolttech wanted the efficiency benefits that could arise from the deeper connection between systems and components. "The benefits we have seen already in creating these connections and building common service is a critical part of creating a developer centric culture."
"With Google Apigee, we have now stood up a self-service platform so that developers can explore our common services, select, test and integrate them into production grade environments. We have drastically reduced integration time from months to days leveraging the power of Apigee and our bolttech APIs."
—Ralph Chan, Group Head of Technology Transformation and Enterprise Services, bolttechbolttech elects to deploy Apigee
After benchmarking available products against these requirements, bolttech opted to deploy Apigee API Management – the Google Cloud API management platform that enables developers to design, secure, scale and publish APIs. With Apigee, bolttech could build and scale its API program while managing APIs across their full lifecycle, and drive consumption of APIs through flexible developer portal options. With many bolttech services already running in Google Cloud, the business saw the potential for synergies within its cloud environment.
"We have deployed Apigee in an agile way, augmenting distributed teams with a dedicated squad to drive the Apigee implementation and the build of high demand service faster. The dedicated squad consists of a scrum master, developer, devops engineer and product owner," explains David. "We’ve made the linkages clear between the work of the squad and the overall KPIs of our business. A number of the API driven metrics we now have in place, are very strong proxy indicators for the trajectory and performance of the business."
Reducing integration times
The organization is now working on further integrating internal systems and working towards a common platform across its multiple businesses in several geographies to support additional self-service and 'plug and play' capabilities in line with becoming an even more hyper-connected company.
"With Google Apigee, we have now stood up a self-service platform so that developers can explore our common services, select, test and integrate them into production grade environments. We have drastically reduced integration time from months to days leveraging the power of Apigee and our bolttech APIs." Says Ralph Chan, Group Head of Technology Transformation and Enterprise Services, bolttech.
Realizing a vision with Apigee and Google Cloud
Apigee is now playing a key role in enabling bolttech to realize its vision and help drive transformation across the insurance sector. "We’re building a digital ecosystem that’s transforming the way protection and insurance is bought and sold," says Ralph. "This is underpinned by our technology which enables our business partners to seamlessly connect to our technology-enabled ecosystem for protection and insurance, so our partners can in turn offer insurance and protection products to their customers within the existing customer journeys."
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About bolttech
bolttech is an international insurtech with a mission to build the world’s leading, technology-enabled ecosystem for protection and insurance. bolttech serves customers in 30 markets across North America, Asia and Europe. With a full suite of digital and data-driven capabilities, bolttech powers connections between insurers, distributors, and customers to make it easier and more efficient to buy and sell insurance and protection products.