While regulators require data to monitor a healthy insurance market, data is not readily available or delivered timely enough for their urgent needs. Data that is delivered is not trustable enough to form important opinions, or as the basis for policy decisions. And it is simply not there for emerging risks.

The amount of information being amassed across all industries today is soaring, and insurers are mining more data and insights from new and emerging sources, from telematics and IoT, to machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. Insurers have more information to better assess exposures, loss causes and trends, and to more precisely underwrite and price risk. For regulators, this makes the already challenging job of getting the right information, at the right time, increasingly difficult. Transparency is increasingly elusive.

openIDL is an open distributed ledger platform that addresses this regulatory “Data Problem” by allowing Regulators and other information seekers to request and receive precisely the information they need from the network for their defined purpose – as permitted by Insurers. At the same time, Insurers are able to keep data completely private, secure and in their direct control.

openIDL was initially developed by AAIS, a founding member and national, not-for-profit advisory organization and licensed statistical agent. Insurance regulators responsible for ensuring a fair and healthy insurance market face the same problem today that they faced 50 years ago: getting the information on which to make regulatory policy and take executive or legislative action to help their constituents – including insurers – manage risk. Insurance regulators were directly involved as a key stakeholder in Design Thinking sessions to help reimagine the fundamental challenges and potential solutions to data collaboration, critical to informed insurance regulation for the future.

With openIDL, regulators gain valuable and relevant insights into exposures, market activity and trends in a neutral, trusted environment.

• openIDL illuminates insights needed to make well-informed decisions to enhance policy. Simply ask your question and receive the answer you need, drawing on substantiated insurer knowledge and information.
• Gain efficient, dynamic insurer reporting, with more timely and comprehensive insights into market activities.
• Eliminate time-consuming data calls, and hone in on relevant information, uploaded in near-real time to address specific market developments.
• Reduce the cost of regulatory reporting for insurers and regulators alike.

Insurance regulators see the value, and more and more are engaging with openIDL for more reliable, accurate and timely access to the market information they need. They are shifting to a new paradigm, asking better questions of the industry, with context and purpose, and getting the answers they need to inform decisions – without having to request and manage volumes of asynchronous, confidential data.

openIDL is designed to be a trusted environment for data privacy and interoperability, an open-source, community-led ‘network of networks.’ As a Linux Foundation Project, the openIDL will benefit from the leading technology organization dedicated to building sustainable ecosystems around open-source projects. In the future, openIDL applications will extend to other use cases across the entire insurance ecosystem. Working groups are already developing applications in the flood and auto insurance space, and the possibilities appear endless.

Rather than requisitioning an off-the-shelf solution that will quickly be obsolete, join the openIDL Community.

Join openIDL as a “Regulator Member” and demonstrate public support by your State Insurance Department. It’s a lightweight commitment of time for a senior member of the Department staff to be involved in periodic meetings and recruitment activities.

We are also looking for individuals from Departments to join the openIDL Community, to participate in upcoming events, and contribute their experience to help us improve our industry.

The openIDL community invites you to learn more and participate in furthering this key infrastructure for the future of insurance. Visit our Join Now page to get started.