For health insurers that outsource all or part of their business development and policy administration activities, the annual financial close remains a complex, time-consuming exercise that is not always as accurate as it could be. For many years, achieving a true “fast close” seemed an unattainable goal. API FIN, developed by Apidata, changes the game. By consolidating all data flows and industrialising financial management, this Middle Office tool gives insurers a daily view of their financial commitments.
“Only a few months ago, whenever I mentioned ‘fast close’ to health insurers, they looked at me as though I was promising them the Holy Grail!” smiles Christophe Burlot, co-founder of Apidata, the Middle Office solution for health and protection insurers. Following 12 years of work by the Apidata teams to industrialise every aspect of insurance management data flows, producing daily financial accounts is now a reality. “The launch of API FIN, our financial consolidation module for third-party accounts, marks the culmination of that work,” continues Christophe Burlot. “Having first enabled insurers to gain a technical view of their commitments, we can now provide them with a financial view.”
Third-Party Analytical Accounting
Designed as an extension of Apidata’s data collection and qualification capabilities, API FIN adds a financial layer to the insurance Middle Office, supporting processes right through to bank transfers. It continuously organises and manages the financial flows of every stakeholder in the value chain, whether management delegates, distributors or reinsurers.
By consolidating these flows, API FIN builds multi-dimensional analytical accounting. “We designed API FIN as a third-party accounting system,” explains Christophe Burlot. Insurers gain a real-time view of premiums, claims, commissions and any anomalies. Every transaction is reconciled, allocated and reported by contract, accounting period or level of risk. Insurers can analyse account positions at the level of an entire third party (for example, a brokerage firm), each client company managed by that broker, or each individual business introducer. They can calculate and release working capital or commission payments more quickly, while also being able to suspend payments to a delegated administrator that has failed to manage premium collections correctly, or to a company that is no longer paying its premiums.
Financial Close Is No Longer a Challenge
Until now, consolidating the financial flows required for year-end closing has been an extremely time-consuming process for insurers and their statutory auditors. Payment schedules and cash receipts often still had to be reconciled manually. As a result, financial close frequently took place late, followed by adjustment entries that could continue for several months afterwards. In short, it was a complex, lengthy process that was not always entirely reliable.
“Financial close is no longer a challenge,” says Christophe Burlot. This first and foremost addresses regulatory expectations. The French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR) has become increasingly vocal about insurers’ lack of visibility over their financial commitments. More importantly, however, it transforms the way insurers manage their business. Being able to monitor receipts and payments in real time enables them to feed their actuarial models with up-to-date financial data, adjust technical provisions more quickly and strengthen their solvency position.
Christophe Burlot sees this as a genuine shift in perspective: “Insurers can now benefit from an industrialised view of their risks, opening up new opportunities to manage and develop additional business lines such as savings and retirement products.”
Beyond these operational gains, API FIN also addresses a more structural challenge: organisational fragmentation. “Accountants, actuaries, commercial teams and underwriters often rely on such different reference frameworks that they struggle to speak the same language,” explains Christophe Burlot.
“We enable them to work from unified financial data, giving them a shared and consistent view of their business.