The Future of Insurtech: Innovating Across the Value Chain with AWS Marketplace, FOXO, and Unqork

Unqork

In this insurance webinar, learn how AI, data, and no-code platforms drive innovation. Hear about FOXO Technologies’ successes using Unqork and the latest insurtech trends from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Between data silos, security vulnerabilities, and increased customer demand for more personalized services, insurers can (and should) leverage technology to address these challenges. FOXO Technologies, an insurtech carrier that underwrites life insurance policies using cutting-edge epigenetics data, knows all about the challenges of dealing with extremely sensitive client information.

FOXO enjoyed recent success with utilizing digital technologies across the insurance value chain: Unqork’s no-code enterprise application platform and the easily scalable infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. That’s why Tyler Danielson (CTO, FOXO), Taylor Fay (VP of Product, FOXO), and Siddarth Tickoo (Global Insurance Partner Development Lead, AWS) got together to speak about how FOXO leveraged Unqork’s solution in AWS Marketplace to reduce development issues, lower total cost of ownership, and ultimately improve customer satisfaction.

Watch the full presentation.

Siddarth Tickoo walks listeners through the three categories that run on AWS and drive innovation. “First, we have the creative carriers. They have more direct involvement in the insurance space and are full stack, meaning end-to-end in terms of quote, bind, and issuance of policies, and while some carry risk on their books, most are underwritten by traditional carriers,” he explains. “The second bucket is the data and analytics suppliers. These players focus on data and emerging tech and building analytics-driven software.” Unqork is among this category due to its ability to help carriers develop underwriting workbench applications without having to interact with any code. Customer experience enablers are the third bucket, which Unqork is also a part of.

Developing software that revolutionizes life insurance

FOXO seeks to change the way life insurance is underwritten and sold—mainly, make it quicker and make it less invasive. So, rather than wait for the industry to catch up, they built their own life insurance carrier!

Tyler Danielson explains that high quality, better adaptability, and fast speed to market were the key metrics this software needed to hit. “What we learned right away was adaptability was a core element, as well as microservice abilities. We leveraged two tools in particular because of their quality and adaptability. The first one is AWS. That’s our infrastructure… It includes continuous integration and continuous deployment for us to be able to move fast,” explains Tyler.

“Unqork is our user interface API. Unqork is built using atomic design, which is key to reusability. It has a modular architecture that allows us to reuse all the different modules we create. Just like AWS, it includes continuous integration and continuous deployment, so it’s easy for us to work with agile processes—and then it’s easy to teach new developers.”

FOXO has a unique way of approaching recruitment: they look for potential and willingness to learn over having a specific set of skills or tenure. According to Taylor Fay, “We’re really hiring for ambition over experience. We have 14 developers on the team that were trained specifically in Unqork and for their first software development job… We’ve been able to build because of the way we’ve mixed those individuals with more experienced developers and the right amount of mentorship, the right amount of support from Tyler and I, and the right amount of autonomy so they can learn quickly.”

“90% of the stuff that we built up to this point is built in Unqork, and it’s built well there,” answers Tyler Danielson. “It meets all of our expectations…”

During the Q&A session, Siddarth Tickoo asks an interesting question, “You mentioned building complicated policy and underwriting systems… How did Unqork perform as a no-code platform in actually helping you build and deploy these core systems in an accelerated manner?”

“90% of the stuff that we built up to this point is built in Unqork, and it’s built well there,” answers Tyler Danielson. “It meets all of our expectations for what we need to do in those complicated systems, specifically with the quote application, policy administration, and even the reinsurance administration tool, which is entirely a backend system.”

Interested in learning more? Watch the full conversation above. Enterprise organizations have already procured Unqork through AWS Marketplace, including a top global asset management firm.