The Central Insurance company of Iran, the industry’s regulator, has denied claims that it plans to create a monopoly in the online insurance market.
Last week the CII posted a statement on its website elaborating the planned role of Amitis Company in the online insurance market, saying "the company is not meant to be used for monopolizing the market but it would be a hub and gateway for linking applications to insurance company web services."
The statement was in response to a letter from the Iran Fintech Association in which the CII was accused of planning to set up a monopolized market with all the transactions made by online insurance firms and setting up a quasi-private company.
"The so-called private company is owned by the CII and its office is in one of the buildings owned by the regulator. The CII has instructed all startups to work only with Amitis without contacting insurance companies or brokers," the letter complained.
The association added that the move is in breach of competition norms and urged the CII to withdraw the controversial decision and create a robust workgroup with experts and market players to be able to make informed judgments.
The association also criticized CII gateways for major operational flaws. "The gateways developed by the company have failed to take into account the basics of designing digital products and are highly insecure.”
The CII says it has done nothing wrong. As per the law, the gateway is set to be developed and run by the regulator. "The gateways are responsible for receiving APIs for policy rates, issuing policies and payments from applications to insurance companies. It is also set to aggregate policyholders' records plus their vehicle records and the 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.
However, the CII stressed that none of these tasks will generate revenue for it and that the gateways are “instruments for connecting parties involved in online insurance services.”
It noted that its intention is to develop and promote an open insurance platform in Iran that would help address problems faced by insurance startups.
Hundreds of startups and knowledge-based companies have opened in Iran with some offering 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.
