CSIO is Canada's insurance data standards body, and the operator of what appears to be the only public, tiered API certification programme in insurance anywhere in the world. It publishes API standards for Canadian property and casualty insurance and certifies carriers and vendors against them, maintaining a public certification table.
CSIO
CSIO deserves far more attention than its national scope suggests, because it has built the one thing the rest of global insurance lacks.
- Published API standards - Standards for Canadian P&C covering the exchange between carriers and brokers.
- A public certification table - Carriers and vendors appear with their certification tier, so the market can see who has done the work.
- Tiers, including Gold - A British agency-management vendor holds CSIO Gold through its Canadian operation, which is a striking result in itself.
- Security standards - A separate API Security Standards certification exists and is held by at least one major Canadian carrier.
- Member-gated substance - The certification’s underlying scope model is available to members, so the signal is public while the detail is not.
The State of Canadian Insurance APIs found the certification table telling a story on its own: the country’s largest property and casualty insurer sits on it as Not Yet Rated while smaller competitors hold higher tiers. Canada built the scoreboard the rest of the world does not have, and its market leader declined to be scored. The single highest-leverage change CSIO could make is publishing its scope model outside membership — that one act would give Canada the most usable insurance standards infrastructure in the world.
Referenced in API Evangelist papers
This standard shows up in my published research. These reports read the machine-readable evidence provider by provider — and put this standard in the context of a real sector.
The State of Canadian Insurance APIs
The only public, tiered insurance API certification programme in the world — and Canada's largest P&C insurer sits on its table as Not Yet Rated.
