Deploy BiPRO services quickly with the X4 BiPRO Server

Satisfied agents who work efficiently and paper-free make a significant contribution to the success of the company in Zurich’s sales process. For the efficient digital handling of sales processes, the standards of BiPRO e. V. have become established as the standard for electronic data exchange.

For digital interfaces and communication between insurers and sales partners to be implemented in a reasonable way, a flexible IT architecture and secure access to data are required. The standards of BiPRO e. V. provide secure authentication methods to prevent unauthorized external access to internal systems. Furthermore, for proper tariffing, constantly updated occupation and fund lists are a mandatory requirement, just as implemented standards must be regularly updated to new BiPRO e. V. releases.

With an X4 BiPRO server in SoftProject’s ISO-certified data center, BiPRO-compliant services could be provided in a very short time. Zurich had already implemented the 422 standard for authentication with username and password. This standard was updated to a newer standard release and authentication by username/password was changed to log on by token (standard 410). Standard 426 is currently being implemented. This simplifies the release change, and the standards are more up-to-date with less maintenance.

Zurich provides its own token service for authentication. The token is checked for authenticity, validity and familiarity, and access is controlled via the user’s role.

A tariff calculator was connected via web service. The data is retrieved via REST call and transformed with the X4 BiPRO server in a standard-compliant manner so that it can be read and processed by the tariffing software.

Professions and funds are read from Excel files with an X4 adapter and provided with corresponding services including specific XML schemas. In order to make the results quickly available, these data are loaded into the working memory at server startup.

With this implementation, the back-end does not have to worry about these specifics, since the X4 BiPRO server already brings the functionality with it on the product side.

For authentication, Zurich’s Security Token Service and API Gateway were connected to the X4 BiPRO server. The API Gateway connects the systems for standard 422 to the life tariffing service and for standard 426 to the SME back-end. The services are provided via REST service, and surrounding services are accessed via HTTPS web service. Authentication is implemented via rights management, giving Zurich itself control over all access.