Open Insurance: System of Record

A System of Record is central to our vision of Zinnia Open Insurance. We introduced Zahara, the System of Record that we are building here at Zinnia, on our blog when we launched in September. In this post we’ll look “under the hood” at how it will work and why it’s important.

To achieve our vision for Zinnia Open Insurance, we need to connect people, carrier, and third-party data in an end-to-end, cloud-native data framework. The way we will do this is by developing an immutable System of Record to more efficiently gather, store, and secure data so it can be used to automate complex processes, improve productivity, and reduce operational risk. 

Transforming Life and Annuities Administration 

Traditionally, policy administration has relied on data that is often isolated, i.e.,”siloed,” in different systems. Much of the time it takes to sell a policy, for example, is committed to verifying data as it moves through the sales process. This is because there isn’t a single source of truth that authenticated stakeholders can rely on. Instead, stakeholders have to fall back on emails, calls, and faxes to confirm the data before the application can move to the next step. The result is a lengthy and expensive sales process that can take weeks and even months from lead to in- force policy.

With our Zahara System of Record, we are building the single source of truth that the industry needs to digitize and streamline these types of processes, and ultimately transform product development, administration, and management. Digital ledger technology makes it possible.

A digital ledger is a system for recording transactions that is synchronized across systems and shared so authenticated parties have ready access to stored information. The ledger not only records interactions and transactions, it also serves as the source of truth that triggers the next event. For example, as we described in our post on smart contracts, when a prescribed event occurs as specified in the contract, the smart contract executes. It’s the digital ledger that confirms that the criteria have been met for the smart contract to proceed.

Secure by Design

Digital ledger technology also ensures an unprecedented level of data security. The ledger captures events in real time, so data is auditable, transparent, and immutable. With Zahara, we are also building a native API service layer with explicit party-base authorization. This enables authenticated stakeholders to securely engage with the data in real time, anytime and anywhere.

Zahara also uses Daml, a private, secure, and scalable smart-contract language for distributed ledger technology. Daml is short for Digital Asset Modeling Language, and it enables us to get applications up and running faster. This component-based architecture and secure data framework facilitates dynamic administration and real-time event processing. 

In the coming months we’ll explore Daml in more detail through a conversation with our partner, Digital Asset. Meanwhile, to learn more about Zinnia Open Insurance and our Zahara System of Record, more information is available here: