Herald Changelog
The latest updates at Herald.
The changes below are Herald additions and updates that are backwards compatible. In the event of a change that may affect your integration with Herald, you'll be contacted in advance to ensure you have sufficient time to adjust. Read more in our guide to High Impact Changes at Herald.
Introducing Data Extractions (Beta)
Streamline quote-and-bind workflow with PDF extraction
Herald recently announced the launch of its Data Extraction feature to streamline the insurance quote-and-bind workflow by enabling brokerages to extract unstructured data from PDF documents—such as application forms—and integrate them into their systems
You can leverage the /data_extraction endpoint to post and retrieve data from PDFs that you upload via the existing /files endpoint. See step-by-step guidance here.
Note that /data_extraction is a beta endpoint. If you would like to request access to this beta release, please contact support@heraldapi.com.
Shareable links in HeRB
We’ve enabled customers to share links at every stage of the quote and bind process in HeRB. For example, you could easily share a link to a quote with your colleagues via email, or share with Herald customer success representative a bind application you need help with.
Additional feature enhancements and bug fixes
- We’ve added customer and agent facing tooltips to the appendix, allowing customers to view tooltips in the /application endpoint response
- We’ve simplified our /insurance_parameters relevance and combined identical conditionals for different products
- We’ve removed a set of conditional parameters for a carrier’s EPLI product to stay in sync with carrier requirements
- We’ve fixed a bug related to authorized vendor parameters for a Management Liability product
- We’ve fixed a bug related to re-rate flow
- We’ve fixed a bug related to a carrier’s MPL file failure in the new quote processor flow
Guide to Binding Policies
Bind Documentation and Guides
If you’ve been keeping up with our last few changelogs, you know that we’ve released a number of features related to binding policies. This week, we released our bind documentation. This documentation walks through the entire process of getting policies via Herald, with step-by-step guides for integrating with each endpoint.
Our bind documentation walks through:
- Filling out Bind Applications: Binding a quote can require additional information unrelated to the applicants eligibility, such as payment information, agreeing to a set of terms and conditions, or uploading a signed application. Bind Applications collect this information required to bind a quote after the institution has already determined that they are willing to insure the business.
- Submitting Bind Orders: Once you’ve completed a bind application, you can submit a bind order to request a policy. When you submit a bind order, the bind application is sent to the institution to review.
- Getting Policies: Once a bind order is [.h-code]accepted[.h-code], you can get the details of the policy that was created! Every policy includes a number of policy related files provided by the institution, as well as the policy number, coverage values, and additional metadata about the policy.
- Completing Policy Actions: After providing a policy, an institution may require you to pay for the policy, upload a file, or answer additional questions. All of these requests are communicated as actions on a policy, which can be completed using the Actions endpoint.
As noted in our previous changelog, Herald currently supports bind for Cyber Insurance and Miscellaneous Professional Liability products. Check back in for new lines of business to support bind in the near future!
Fixes and Improvements
- We expanded the set of [.h-code]coverage_values[.h-code] we return for cyber policies.
- We expanded our Management Liability appetite by introducing additional underwriting questions for applicants viewed as large-risk. These questions allow applicants with larger total assets and higher employee counts to get quotes.
- We added a new input type of [.h-code]agree_to[.h-code] for questions that expect an applicant to agree to a set of terms and conditions.
More Products and Features for Bind
We have launched bind for our first professional liability product
Our bind feature allows you to bind in addition to quote using Herald. We have added bind for our first professional liability product. Add that to the list of 5 Cyber Products you can already bind, making 6 total. The number is growing every day.
We set the stage to support bind for many more carriers
We launched 2 new features that will make bind easier to use with more products.
- What’s in it for you: Now when you bind a policy with Herald there will be more ways to get the carrier what they need instantly. And if the carrier will bind and let you get to things later, we’ll bind the policy and let you know what to do next.
- File Uploads: Many carriers require a file upload to bind a policy, such as a signed application. We launched our POST /files to allow uploading files to Herald.
- Post-Bind Actions: Some carriers require additional information after a policy is bound. We released actions as a way for you to submit required information after a policy is bound.
Look out for bind to be available for more products are we prepare to support bind at scale.
Our product team is growing!
We recently hired a new product manager with amazing industry experience (think Plaid). We are bringing the best talent so that we can make the best products for you.
Another Cyber Product and Updated Quote Status
Another Cyber Product
We’ve recently added 1 new Cyber product, bringing our total number of Cyber products to 10!
Updating Quote Status (’asynchronous quoting’)
When a user makes a submission via Herald, in the happy path a carrier responds in real time (more or less, maybe a few seconds) with a quote. However, there are also some ‘unhappy paths’.
The first is a decline, in which the carrier refuses to offer a quote to that applicant. In a second path, a carrier may refer the quote to an underwriter for human review. After the underwriter looks at the account they will decide whether it should be quoted or declined.
Some carriers handle this within their API! After the underwriter makes a decision, their API will update to reflect the new status of the quote. Now, Herald checks for those updated statuses and notifies our users when they change via our webhooks. We call this ‘aysnchronous quoting’. We’ll continue to roll this out across additional carriers where supported over time!
Fixes and Improvements
- We have created a new error message for when policies that are trying bind are declined when they don’t have a corresponding broker license number.
- We have several fields that require input types of integers. Now, if we are send a number as a string, we’ll automatically convert it into an integer instead of throwing a data validation error.