Lemonade announced Tuesday that it launched a public API (application programming interface), allowing anyone to seamlessly offer Lemonade policies through their apps or websites.

“Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re opening up the Lemonade platform to the world!

For the first time, developers will be able to easily incorporate insurance into their own experience, alongside their main products,” Lemonade Co-Founder Shai Wininger wrote in a blog item on the Lemonade website published the same day that his company delivered the news in a media statement.

Specifically, the media statement listed developers of commerce sites, real estate apps, financial advisors, bots, IoT and smart home products as beneficiaries of the open platform. They “will now be able to complement their offerings with insurance, allowing their customers instant coverage and a hassle-free experience without ever leaving their app or website,” Lemonade said.

“It takes years to pull together the licenses, capital and technology needed to offer insurance instantly through an app, which is why it’s almost nonexistent. Today’s API launch changes that. Anyone with a slight familiarity with coding can now include these capabilities in their app, in a matter of hours,” said Wininger in the statement

Through its API platform, Lemonade will initially offer developers access to its renters, condo, and homeowners insurance. The new Lemonade API supports easy quoting, policy creation and claims payment in Lemonade’s active markets of New York, California, Texas, Illinois, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

As Lemonade introduces new insurance products to market, the API will expand too, the statement said.

In his blog item titled, “Introducing the Lemonade Insurance API: Opening Up Insurance Powered By AI To The World,” Wininger drew parallels to other companies that chose the path of “liberating technology,” such as Amazon and Apple.

“The API economy had a slow but substantial impact on the way companies share what used to be their closely guarded, proprietary, intellectual property,” he wrote.

“Amazon, which started as an online bookstore, opened up its AWS platform to become the leading cloud provider in the world. It now owns a whopping 47 percent market share (in revenue). Google, who was late to the game, owns less than 4 percent,” he stated.

Apple opened its app business grudgingly, he said, suggesting that hackers forced the liberation, giving birth to the App Store now holding more than 2 million apps.

Wininger went on to explain two ways in which developer can integrate Lemonade’s API:

• With a simple, one-line-of-code that results in the display of Lemonade’s “customizable Maya bot experience in a window” to handle everything from collecting information for a policy quote to securely paying claims.
• Using a more advanced option that bypasses the bot, allowing the developer to control every step of the insurance purchase flow.

Wininger suggested that established businesses such as real estate companies, mortgage originators, ecommerce sites and lifestyle brands should give it a try.

Lemonade, which describes itself as an “insurance company powered by artificial intelligence and behavioral economics,” unveiled a different kind of open environment in August—allowing insurance customers to make coverage changes on their own. Specifically, the “Live Policy” option allows insureds to make changes to provisions like deductibles or limits, or to add or deleted covered parties, without call a customer service representative or waiting for an agent or broker to handle the process.

Source: Lemonade