Overview
Equator is RDT’s award-winning data orchestration tool designed in collaboration with insurers, and it’s played a key role changing the way insurance is sold.
Equator, an insurer hosted rating platform, provides accurate real-time risk rating, drawing on data from third party data feeds to enable the insurer to provide the right price for the right risk. With Equator, insurers can manage their rates centrally and process more than 50 million quotes a day.
The reliance on broker software houses to distribute rates isn’t just old thinking – it’s antiquated. Equator does away with the need to distribute rates altogether. Due to its lightning-fast capabilities, it allows insurers to update their rates as and when they want to, while being cloud hosted provides pay-as-you-use cost advantages and rapid scalability for peaks in demand.
Using Equator, insurers can be confident that they’re writing good quality business at the right price, based on the best available information. Undesirable applicants can be identified at the point of quote, cutting application fraud by up to 60 per cent.
Key Features
Real-time data enrichment at point of quote
Real-time data enrichment at point of quote has changed the way risk is assessed. Equator calls information feeds from Third Party providers such as Experian, Lexis Nexis, DVLA (via MIB), CRIF and Synectics at the point of quote. Using the returned data to augment details given by the customer, it empowers insurers to write products which intelligently calculate and price the risk. It does this sub-second, regardless of whether the quote is from a broker software house, an aggregator site or an in-house insurance system, so that all the calculations take place in real time.
No more rates distribution
Equator removes the need for insurers to send their rates anywhere. Instead using purpose built APIs the sales channels access the rates directly at point of quote. Equator supports quotes from a wide variety of channels, including aggregators, smart phone apps and direct sales websites. It does this through integration with policy administration systems and with broker software houses including CDL, BGL, Open GI, SSP, Applied Systems, and the AA. Additional software houses continue to integrate. Equator utilises a service-based architecture and through its collection of APIs can integrate with any third party software.
Equator is available in 2 Editions, Standard and Bespoke. Equator Standard is optimised to get customers up and running as quickly as possible by providing a fixed format integration with third parties designed to pass all incoming data into insurers products to empower them to flex their offerings without needing to utilise any RDT resource or any software changes. This is also an ideal solution for MGA’s looking to start out small and grow rapidly as it enables additional channel integrations to be switched on in days. The Bespoke Edition allows insurers or MGAs with an appetite to individually define integrations to utilise Equator and have it shaped specifically to their own requirements.
Rates management, information and monitoring
Equator records details of transactions and produces real time throughput metrics. These statistics, plus details about errors and warnings, are accessible from Equator’s user interface and can also be posted to the insurer’s own monitoring system.
Product testing and debugging
Once products have been defined, Equator’s test harness allows business users to generate requests at volume from their own defined test pack of cases and fire these directly at the products they are building while the debugging tools allow breakpoints to be defined within the scheme logic and for any issues to be easily identified and worked on. This allows the users to see all internal variables, as well as the XML output file change, as the scheme is evaluated. This improves rating accuracy and can also be useful in verifying rate details for compliance purposes.
Key Benefits
a faster route to market
Traditionally for broker-led insurers, changing the price of a product can mean sending out the same information to several software houses individually for development and testing. Using Equator insurers can update their rates as and when required without the need for third party development time and costs, and once published those rates will instantly become available for all their channels to access at point of quote.
Better data capture and understanding of risk
A huge number of new policies are cancelled because applicants have given inaccurate information at application. By using Equator insurers can better understand the risk at point of quote by supplementing information provided by the applicant with additional data from enrichment partners. The same applicant could try several channels – not realising they are applying and re-applying to the same insurer – but with Equator every quote is defended with the insurer’s own rules and enrichment. Using Equator is proven to cut application fraud by up to 60 per cent.
Accurate pricing across the board
Real-time data enrichment at point of quote gives insurers peace of mind that they are providing the right price for the right risk. There is no reliance on inaccurate data from the customer, and insurers can price good risks competitively and load quotes for the bad risks. This puts them in a position where they are selecting the risk, rather than being selected against. Equator gives underwriters greater flexibility in managing rates, including the ability to change them as often as they need to, empowering them to respond in real time to current market intelligence.
Scalability & performance
Equator is proven in the market to be highly scalable, handling 50 million quotes a day whilst meeting all upstream SLA’s for response times, from SWHs, Aggregators and data providers.