Insurance startups say implementing measures that promote competitiveness by the regulator is the key for the growth of the sector.
Officials from the Central Insurance company of Iran, CEOs of insurance startups and representative of some insurance companies reviewed the impact of CII’s controversial gateway on the business of startups, Risknews reported.
The CII has ordered all startups to work only with Amitis, without contacting insurance companies or brokers. Startups have protested saying that this is in breach of acceptable competition norms
Iran Fintech Association has accused the CII of trying to create a market monopoly with all transactions made by online insurance firms and setting up a quasi-private company, Amitis.
The IFA is of the opinion that the gateways have failed to take into account the basics of designing digital products and are highly insecure.
The CII, however, denies the claims.
"This company [Amitis] is not for monopolizing the market. The aim is to set up a hub and gateway for linking applications to insurance company web services."
On Monday the two sides met for the first time but nothing concrete was achieved.
Hamed Valipour, the CEO of AzKi startup, said that one objective of any functioning business is to increase market share and have an advantages over its peers.
"Technology is one of the instruments that can help reduce costs and improve buyers' experience…Traditional players usually resist innovation and it the regulator's duty to manage the conflict," he said.
Employing measures that support fair competition can and should address the challenges between traditional stakeholders and startups, he stressed.
Qasem Nemati, the CII deputy for IT affairs, however, said that the regulator must consider other aspects before finding the best solutions.
"I agree that the regulator plays a key role in supporting the growth of startups…We support innovative solutions, but need to create a viable and effective mechanism [to move ahead]. If not we will face challenges in future.”
He insisted that the new gateway is not for increasing CII revenue. It is for addressing problems of insurance startups, he said. "We are in the initial stages."
The CII announced earlier that based on law the gateways are developed and run by the regulator. "The gateways are responsible for receiving APIs for policy rates, issue policies and payments from applications to insurance companies. It will also gather policyholders' records, their vehicle history and IDs of car owners.
An API gateway is a management tool that sits between a client and a collection of backend services. An API gateway acts as a reverse proxy to accept all application programming interface (API) calls, aggregate the various services required to fulfill them and return the appropriate result.
Hundreds of startups and knowledge-based companies have opened in Iran and some offer insurance services. They account for almost 96% of the total online sales and are recognized as knowledge enterprises by the government with an estimated 5-trillion-rial investment.
