CSIO 2022 Annual Report
Innovation is motion.
2022 Highlights
CSIO’s members don’t just share our commitment to innovation. They help drive it.
Together, we’ve had
another successful year supporting customer experience improvements by developing and maintaining our
Standards, tools and services.
We took a number of important steps forward in 2022. Each reinforces our advancement of reliable, secure technology solutions. Each empowers our insurer and vendor members to innovate on behalf of their broker partners and customers.
Who We Are
Our Members
85+
Insurers
45+
Vendors
38k+
Brokers
An ever-growing network of digitally-
focused industry leaders.
Board of Directors
The Board of Directors provides insight and leadership that enables CSIO to continuously drive the Canadian P&C industry forward. We greatly appreciate the efforts of these knowledgeable executives for another successful year.
Mathieu Brunet
Vice President,
Insurance Operations,
MP2B Assurance
Joseph Carnevale
Vice President, Sales - Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA),
A.J. Gallagher
Steve Earle
President,
Bauld Insurance
Christopher Harness
Chief Information Officer,
Northbridge Financial Corporation
Aly Kanji
President &
Chief Executive Officer,
InsureLine Brokers Inc.
Tatjana Lalkovic
Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer,
Definity Financial
Michael Lin
Chief Information Officer,
Travelers Canada
Cam Loeppky
CSIO Chairman,
Senior Vice President &
Chief Information Officer,
The Wawanesa Mutual
Insurance Company
Catherine Smola
President &
Chief Executive Officer,
CSIO
Luc Tanguay
Senior Vice President -
Commercial Lines,
Intact Financial Corporation
Zoey Todorovic
Chief Information Officer,
Aviva Canada
James Warburton
Chief Information Officer,
Gore Mutual Insurance Company
Sheldon Wasylenko
CSIO Vice Chair,
General Manager,
Rayner Agencies Ltd.
Peter Braid
CSIO Guest Member,
Chief Executive Officer,
Insurance Brokers Association of Canada
Championing
Broker Technology
All of our members share a common goal – to deliver the best possible customer experience. CSIO champions secure technology Standards, tools and services to drive customer satisfaction across the insurance value chain. Our efforts ensure that insurer and broker systems work together, exchanging data in a structured format, efficiently and accurately.
CSIO’s Innovation and Emerging Technology (INNOTECH) Advisory Committee and its Working Groups are committed to advancing broker technology. Working together with our members, we delivered a number of firsts in 2022, addressing the industry’s most common pain points related to Application Programming Interface (API) Data Standards, API Security Standards and Billing & Claims eDocs Notifications.
INNOTECH API Data Standards
Broker management systems (BMS) and the insurer systems they need to communicate with don’t always speak the same language. As a result, brokers need to access an insurance company’s portal or contact the insurer – via email or telephone – to access customer information.
APIs enable BMS and insurer systems to share information with one another. Insurer systems programmed with API coding can do so securely, in real-time – faster than ever before. JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is the best-available technology for API data interchange, delivering larger amounts of information between insurer and broker systems, more quickly than before.
Think of the broker as a restaurant customer. The insurance company – the chef in this metaphor – prepares whatever meal the broker asks for. The order is submitted via BMS, and relayed to the kitchen by JSON API Standards. That makes JSON the restaurant server. JSON ensures that the broker’s request is communicated quickly, clearly and efficiently. Far more so than if the broker were to go into the kitchen and try to get the chef’s attention directly.
A Big Year for CSIO’s API Data Standards
CSIO’s INNOTECH Advisory Committee and API Working Groups delivered on our 2022 API
Development Roadmap.
January
The Insurance Brokers Association of Canada (IBAC) Data Exchange (DX) initiative rolled into the INNOTECH API Roadmap.
February
Confirmed priority API use cases to be developed for the 2022 roadmap.
March
JSON API Standards published for Individually Rated Commercial Automobile (IRCA) and Commercial General Liability (CGL) policy inquiry.
June
Creating a quote’s business requirements finalized – the year’s first major milestone since IBAC DX rolled into INNOTECH roadmap.
December
Finalized business requirements needed to publish JSON API Standards for 10 new use cases.
2022 API Development Roadmap
There are 40 use cases in total, 10 each for the personal automobile, habitational insurance, IRCA and CGL lines of business.
- Get quote
- Create quote submission
- Request bind
- Policy amendment of details
- Addition of coverage/risk
- Deletion of coverage/risk
- Policy cancellation
- Create first notice of loss
- Get claims status
- Amend payment details
Top Five Benefits of API Data Standards
Real-time data exchange between insurer systems and BMS
Fluid information delivery
Eliminates multiple portals and processes
Improves customer experience
Saves time
INNOTECH API Security Standard
Brokers trying to log into insurer systems have to deal with a variety of authentication and authorization processes. Similarly, BMSs have varying levels of security.
The INNOTECH Advisory Committee and API Security Working Group made progress in the development of one common authentication and authorization API model, by publishing the industry’s first API Security Standard, and set of best practices. This provides brokers the security requirement they need prior to authenticating into an insurer system.
The Working Group has plans to advance the Standard to accommodate more API interaction, and to evolve the API Security Standard for microservices.
Top Three Benefits of the API Security Standard
Seamless log-in process for brokers
Versatility - new functionality will follow
Enables continuous improvement - we’ll keep innovating for future security needs
INNOTECH API Security Accomplishment
API Security Working Group published the P&C Insurance industry’s first API Security Standard
Kim Opheim
Broker Technology and Innovation Consultant at IBAC and INNOTECH Advisory Committee Member
This is foundational work that will support data exchange
Our industry has increasingly leveraged technology to digitize operations since early 2020, which makes security more important than ever. It’s been a great experience working with the CSIO INNOTECH Working Group’s insurers and vendors on this very complex and important API security project. This is foundational work that will support data exchange for the betterment of the broker distribution channel.
INNOTECH API Working Groups: The People Behind the Success
Please join us in thanking the brokers, insurers and vendors who make up our three Working Groups:
API Business Requirements
API Technical Standards
API Security
INNOTECH Billing and Claims
eDocs Notifications
Brokers spend a lot of time chasing billing and claims information. According to a CSIO broker survey:
68%
68% of brokers spend 1 hour plus per day answering customer billing questions.
66%
66% of brokers make at least 1 claims call to an insurer each day.
Billing and Claims eDocs Notifications provide brokers automatic customer billing-and claims-related status updates, directly to their BMS. Insurers can deliver these details securely and easily.
Billing and Claims eDocs Notifications leverage CSIO eDocs and CSIOnet to streamline the flow of information across dozens of use cases. The INNOTECH Advisory Committee and its Working Groups will continue to grow that list in the months and years ahead.
Billing Use Cases
- Payment Schedule on Recurring Payments
- Payment Schedule on Payment Installments
- Payment Returned on Recurring Monthly Payments (no intent to cancel)
- Payment Returned on Payment Installments
- Past Due Payment/Reminder Notice
- Notice of Intent to Cancel/Final Reminder
- Notice of Cancellation Option to Reinstate (registered letter)
- Notice of Cancellation No Option to Reinstate (registered letter)
- Refund Being Returned to Policyholder
- Payment Received/Rescind Cancellation
- Outstanding Balance
- Collection Notice
Claims Use Cases
- Claim Opening
- Claim Reopening
- Claim Close
- Adjuster Assigned
- Adjuster Re-Assigned
- Status Update - Car Rental Update
- Status Update - Total Loss Indicator
- Status Update - Fault Determination/Liability
- Payment Status to Insured (Issued, Date, Location, Payment Method)
Top Five Benefits of Billing and Claims eDocs Notifications
Seamless billing and claims data exchange
Instant access to customer data
Saves broker’s time that can be spent with the customer
Eliminates hard-copy document costs
Better for the environment
Billing and Claims eDocs Certification Program
Our Certification program ensures that insurers’ and vendors’ use of this valuable service meets CSIO Standards.
Congratulations to The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company – the first insurer to earn CSIO’s Claims eDocs Certification. Additional insurers and vendors will be certified in 2023.
Lisa Colwell
VP Personal Lines at Wilson Insurance Ltd.
This will enable greater productivity for our brokers
Our brokerage is very excited for Billing & Claims eDocs solutions to be implemented with our carriers. We look forward to the digital solutions reducing operational costs and providing more efficient workflows. This will enable greater productivity for our brokers so they spend less time retrieving information and more time focusing on our clients.
Professional Development
CSIO’s Professional Development offers free, accredited courses (on-demand) and webinars for members to keep pace with the latest trends and best practices.
In 2022, we continued expanding Professional Development by adding new courses and webinars as part of our commitment to helping members improve their knowledge of digital transformation best practices, digital tools and technologies that drive improved, more innovative customer experiences.
Build Your Brand With CSIO’s Digital Member Designation
Looking to stand out as a lifelong learner? Members who complete six courses earn our Digital Member designation.
Top Five Benefits of Professional Development
Free, accredited courses on demand
Industry-recognized Digital Member designation
Top professional instructors
Increase brokers’ digital competencies
Promotes digital best practices
Jennifer Berfelz
Personal Lines Account Executive, General Insurance Division at Programmed Insurance Brokers Inc.
The on-demand courses make it convenient to learn on your own time
The variety of accredited topics CSIO’s education program covers makes it easy to find a course that is relevant to what you want to learn in today’s ever-changing digital world. The on-demand courses make it convenient to learn on your own time and fit into your schedule. You’ll have the six credits you need to earn the Digital Member designation in no time.
Industry Standards Drive
Customer Experience
For more than four decades, CSIO has developed Data Standards and tools for the Canadian Property & Casualty (P&C) Insurance industry.
By helping to streamline the transmission of insurance information, CSIO Data Standards and tools empower our insurer and vendor members to innovate on behalf of their broker partners and the customers they work hard to serve.
We share our members’ dedication to continuous improvement. CSIO supports brokers across the industry, with Commercial Lines (CL) Data Standards and CSIO Data Standards.
Commercial Lines Data Standards
Our CL Working Group made significant progress supporting real-time small business commercial quote and bind this year.
Real estate was added to the list of small business commercial segments sharing a common data set and streamlined data exchange. The real estate segment joins the contractor, retailer and business and professional services segments, as well as multi-operations small business. Brokers can now provide these customers dynamic, real-time pricing that accommodates limit and risk changes. These Standards mean small business commercial quotes can be produced accurately in minutes, saving brokers time and money, and improving the customer experience. Additional segments will follow in the years ahead.
Top Five Benefits of CL Data Standards
Automated quotes in real time
Faster information flow between broker and insurer systems
More accurate quotes
Savings by the digitalization of transaction
Automatic generation of electronic policy documents by a broker management system
The Working Group also finalized the requirements to bind small commercial business. This enables the exchange of information between broker and insurer systems during the binding process in real time.
The Working Group also developed the Commercial Lines Real-Time Quote Savings Calculator. Brokers can use it to assess the savings available to them when they work with insurers and broker management system vendors who have implemented CSIO’s Commercial Lines Minimum Data Set.
We are grateful to the members of our Commercial Lines Working Group. Their dedication makes a positive impact on our industry every day.
Silvy Wright
President & CEO at Northbridge Financial
This innovation is an important first step in collaborating
Insurance companies that have adopted CSIO Commercial Lines Data Standards are now launching initiatives that allow brokers to efficiently exchange small business submission and quote data right from their own broker management systems. This innovation is an important first step in collaborating with brokers and other carriers to evolve and modernize, creating value for brokers, carriers – and ultimately, our customers.
Commercial Lines Certification Program
Organizations that choose to demonstrate their commitment to CL Data Standards have our full support. The CL Certification program is CSIO’s guarantee that an insurer or vendor is fully compliant with industry best practices.
Applied Systems, Northbridge Insurance and The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company each achieved Level 3 certification in 2022.
CSIO Data Standards
We never stop updating the CSIO Data Standards. As industry requirements evolve, so do the Standards that keep the industry’s ecosystems communicating effectively. Our National Standards Working Group reviews and implements updates monthly.
Policy documents, eDocs, eSlips, and EDI and XML downloads all go through CSIOnet, and all rely on standardized communication. Keeping these living documents in sync with business needs is an essential service that we’re proud to deliver.
3 sets of CSIO Data Standards: EDI, XML and JSON
20+ organizations working together to ensure the Data Standards evolve with industry requirements
152 updates to the CSIO Data Standards
Please join us in recognizing the members of our National Standards Working Group. They continue to do important work for Canada’s P&C Insurance industry.
Services and Solutions
You Can Trust
CSIO remains dedicated to developing and maintaining reliable, secure services for the Canadian P&C Insurance industry. We completed improvements to two of our popular services in 2022: My Proof of Insurance (MPOI) and CSIOnet.
CSIO expanded the MPOI eDelivery platform and implemented new features, some as a direct result of member feedback. We also moved CSIOnet to a robust, cloud-based platform provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). This is a major step forward for CSIO and the industry. We have repeatedly demonstrated our commitment to improving customer experience in the broker channel – another significant achievement that will accommodate continued innovation and growth in the years to come.
My Proof of Insurance
MPOI is Canada’s leading solution for the secure, electronic delivery of personal and commercial policy documents (eDocs), including proof of auto insurance (eSlips). Policyholders can receive and view documents on any device, and eSlips can be stored in a smartphone’s mobile wallet.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digitization of Canada’s P&C Insurance industry, out of both necessity and rising consumer demand. Thanks to the foresight of CSIO leadership, the MPOI delivery platform was already established as a seamless and secure electronic document delivery platform well before 2020.
In fact, the MPOI platform has been improving steadily since its launch in 2018. And, in that time, Canadians have received over a million and a half documents (including eSlips) through the platform.
Top Six Benefits of My Proof of Insurance
Fast and seamless
Bank-grade security
Compliant with
industry regulations
Plug-and-play
implementation, with
minimal training required
Sends policy
documents, billing
statements and eSlips
Works on any device,
with no need for
apps or passwords
Expanding MPOI’s Capabilities
In 2022, we took three big steps forward with MPOI:
- Updated the technology that supports MPOI, to maintain its bank-grade security and high-speed functionality
- Enhanced security measures and protocol
- Added new capabilities, such as adding functionality to send eSlips for garage policies
Cam Loeppky
Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer at
The
Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company and CSIO Board Member
Whatever we need to send to customers, we can do it using this solution
My Proof of Insurance met all of the requirements for our paperless strategy. It’s a multifunctional solution capable of sending not only eSlips, but any renewal document, new policy, endorsements, and even billing and claims statements. Whatever we need to send to customers, we can do it using this solution.
eDocs
Thanks to CSIO’s eDocs solution, brokers can download policy documents into their BMS, directly from an insurer’s system via CSIOnet. These eDocs are fully standardized. Insurers who use them structure their data within agreed-upon rules so that the data can be read and stored by any software.
In 2020, we launched Billing and Claims eDocs notification solutions, and added Billing and Claims to the CSIO eDocs Certification Program. eDocs reduce paper usage, deliver more efficient workflows and facilitate real-time, instantaneous transactions. We recognize all of our members who have made the commitment to eDocs through Certification.
Top Five Benefits of eDocs
Supports all lines of business – personal, commercial, farm – and billing and claims documents
Works with any software, document and file type
Ensures seamless transfers and easy downloads
Established as the industry’s most widely-used document delivery technology
Designed for CSIOnet, the industry’s leading platform
46 million+ eDocs sent in 2022
38,000+ brokers and 85+ insurers access CSIOnet daily
CSIOnet
CSIOnet is an established, widely adopted platform on which data and documents are exchanged between insurers and brokers in the Canadian P&C Insurance industry. The platform sends eDocs and uses EDI and XML to allow brokers to automatically download policy information.
Greater Capacity, Reliability and Performance
We modernized CSIOnet in 2022 by moving it from a legacy physical server platform to a robust, state-of-the-art Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud-based environment.
This expands the platform’s capacity, delivers enhanced reliability for optimal performance, improves download speeds and upgrades security measures to better protect information shared across the system.
Upgrading CSIOnet meets the evolving expectations of policyholders, along with the security and stability requirements of the companies that serve them.
The transition was an industry-wide initiative that involved insurers, vendors and broker members. It is a remarkable example of collaborative problem-solving and robust testing – work that involved the CSIOnet User Acceptance Testing Steering Committee and the User Acceptance Testing Group. Members of both groups deserve our thanks for their dedicated support.
Top Six Benefits of CSIOnet’s AWS Cloud Platform
Maintained a consistent user experience for brokers, insurers and vendors
Faster electronic data interchange and eDoc transfers
Improved problem detection and resolution
Enhanced security to reduce cybersecurity and other risks
Scalable capacity to support continued innovation
Streamlined innovation capabilities to meet evolving customer demands
The Power of a Modernized CSIOnet
AWS Cloud-Based Environment |
Legacy Platform |
|
---|---|---|
Delivery - Insurer to BMS |
3-5 minutes (based on BMS polling frequency set) |
1 to 2 days (based on backlog volume) |
Average response time per transaction |
0.06 seconds, with occasional peaks of 17 seconds |
0.5 seconds, with regular peaks of 10 minutes (causing timeout issues) |
Capacity |
3-x volume capacity |
Unable to meet daily capacity, with frequent backlogs |
Stability |
System capacity can accommodate future growth |
Systems regularly at 85% to 100% capacity, causing outages during |
Source: Cloudwatch and Kowshik
CSIOnet Accomplishment
Migration of CSIOnet to an Amazon Web
Services cloud-based
environment