Unqork brings codeless tech to insurance sales mainstream

Unqork, a provider of digital sales technology for financial and insurance products founded in 2017, has grown considerably on the strength of its codeless technology – which shouldn't be confused with low-code technology, according to Chandresh "CK" Kothari, head of insurance at Unqork.

"Codeless as a Service" is one way to describe Unqork's services, CK said. The company sets up the architecture of its technology so large enterprises can plug it into other pieces of their infrastructure, without shelving systems built or bought over long periods of time.

"Think of this as a platform that enables your existing stack and new technology," he said. "Unqork also helps you build the classic stack that you think about from a front-end layer in orchestration, integration, analytics, calculations and a lot more. That's the key value proposition of who we are in the market."

Unqork signed John Hancock as a major client in 2018 and has since added Chubb, New York Life, MetLife, Marsh and Aon as clients. The company now has more than 125 clients, mostly large and mid-size enterprises, but also some MGAs and underwriters. "We have had success across the scale," CK said. "The technology is built for large enterprises but easily scales down for mid-market or even smaller scale companies, which has typically been a struggle in insurance from a technology perspective."

Complexity exists in insurtech operations in three areas: workflow, integration of systems, and understanding the insurance business. Unqork has made all of these codeless. "Our workflow helps them build their workflow in orchestration with all the business rules," said CK.

Building stacks in Unqork integrates legacy systems with ones that were previously acquired, addressing the complexity of integration of systems. "Many firms, especially in insurance, also have batch processes still," said CK. "It's all the mainframe technology. There are no APIs. That complexity we are able to solve, which is giving them the ability to not only solve for batch processes, but ways to integrate with the existing stack internally or externally."

Understanding the insurance business helps insurtech operations understand specific workflows, rules and standards, and what's expected from technology operations, according to CK. Unqork handles three functions: insurance brokerage portals, underwriting workbenches and digitization of forms.

With brokerage portals, for instance, Unqork built a digital platform for Marsh, giving it the ability to send data digitally, structure data into a system and use data to drive a "seamless ecosystem in the marketplace," said CK. For a firm like Marsh, building its own "pipes" is not economically feasible. Unqork draws on Google Cloud and Google Document AI to extract necessary information, sort submissions and populate documents, supporting underwriters' ability to quote premiums, CK added. Being able to plug in functions and capabilities is a core principle of codeless architecture, as Unqork uses.

The need to make decisions for issuing policies faster has attracted more insurers to codeless systems like Unqork, according to CK. "Decisioning is where the carriers are showing much more willingness to experiment," he said. "Unqork as a technology is enabling that."