One is a 134-year-old behemoth with a long history and a global presence. The other is an innovator in the digital space who is hardly old enough to recall the days before Netflix. However, Allianz and Lemonade are subtly demonstrating the same thing: open insurance is not only feasible, but also effective.
Here’s how two businesses that are very different
in terms of age and place of origin are spearheading a common insurance revolution.
Since its founding in 1890, the corporation has witnessed market crashes, technical revolutions, international wars, and digital upheavals. However, it is more than just living in 2025. It is constructing the future.
Allianz gave everything away in January, which is unusual for a business of its size and reputation.
It provided other insurers with open-source versions of its Allianz Business System (ABS), the core software that drives its operations. No conditions. No costs. Simply gain access.
What precisely is ABS?
Consider it a command center for the digital world. It is designed to grow across business lines, geographical locations, and regulatory regimes, and it manages everything from underwriting to claims and policy administration.
But it is not just the technology that makes this move revolutionary. It is the attitude.
ABS, according to Chief Operating Officer Christof Mascher, is a “insurance app store”—a virtual marketplace where businesses can connect, develop upon, and share infrastructure such as digital printing, text scanning, and broker marketplaces.
Ownership of the entire stack is no longer the goal. The goal is to create a networked ecosystem where cooperation is valued above rivalry. The castle is not being guarded by Allianz. The gates are being thrown open.
Lemonade: Insurance at Your Fingertip Speed
Let us now travel across the street to Lemonade, a bright, daring startup that was founded in 2016 with the sole purpose of making insurance feel more like a streaming service and less like a nuisance.
sleek, quick, and entirely digital. The foundation of Lemonade’s business strategy is trust, technology, and transparency. However, its most recent action may be its most dramatic yet.
Anyone may begin delivering Lemonade policies through their own apps or websites thanks to Lemonade’s developer-friendly public API, which was released in October of last year.
Anybody, indeed. Fintech firms, e-commerce companies, lifestyle blogs, and your preferred dog food subscription service. They can now become insurance distributors with just a few lines of code.
Shai Wininger, a co-founder, perfectly encapsulated the audacity of the move:
The permits, funding, and technology required to provide insurance instantaneously through an app must be gathered over several years. The API launch today alters that.
He is not making this up. Plug-and-play has replaced the labor of compliance armies and large capital expenditures. Maya, Lemonade’s AI-powered chatbot, can even be included into their widget to assist clients in quoting and purchasing policies in a matter of minutes.
With a dash of Siri, it is similar to Shopify for insurance.
The Wider View: Unbundled Insurance
Although they are pursuing it in very different ways, Allianz and Lemonade are both working toward an open, integrated, and unbundled insurance model.
In order to help others create more quickly and intelligently, Allianz is concentrating on industry infrastructure and making its key technologies available. Lemonade is concentrating on distribution, placing insurance where consumers are already—on websites, apps, and other trustworthy digital platforms.
They are working together to destroy the outdated walled-garden insurance model. They are establishing a world in which interoperability, rather than exclusivity, is what creates value. where insurers foster innovation in addition to risk protection.
In conclusion, open insurance is not a fad.
A tectonic shift is occurring.
This goes beyond simply launching APIs and exchanging code. This relates to a subtle yet profound change in the backend operations of insurance.
Not everyone does everything because of open insurance. It implies that no one must do everything by themselves.
And that change may be the best one an insurer can make in a world where digital transformation is becoming essential and client expectations are rising.
