Brightside partners with RDT as Kitsune commences trading
Brightside has partnered with RDT, creators of some of the UK’s most widely used insurance software and leaders in the field of insurtech, to bring its new MGA, Kitsune, to market.
Kitsune, which is part of Brightside Group, are operating on RDT’s Atlas platform, giving the MGA huge flexibility, rapid access to new markets, low cost of entry and complete control over its products. Atlas equips Kitsune with the tools to outperform the competition and, by implementing it, Brightside has demonstrated its commitment to innovation and investment in market-leading technology.
The Atlas suite of services is comprised of RDT’s general insurance solution Landscape, its insurer-hosted rating platform Equator, the web and smart phone app services Panorama, and data management and reporting service Horizon. Businesses have the option to make use of the entire suite or take on individual elements. Kitsune will be using RDT’s Microsoft Azure cloud-based managed service, which is highly scalable, to accommodate future growth.
RDT’s Atlas platform is built upon industry leading technologies and frameworks. RDT has been a Microsoft Gold Partner since 2005 and its software uses the .NET frameworks, the Microsoft SQL Server suite, Microsoft Azure Big Data Services and the Azure Cloud. Other technologies RDT employs include Apache Spark, Xamarin, Angular and native Apple and Android app platforms.
At its core, Atlas has a micro-service architecture running on Microsoft Service Fabric. This provides great flexibility in deployment and management on the Azure Cloud, and very high scalability and availability. Complementing this, the Landscape Client is a modern Windows application with associated Angular Web interfaces.
Equator delivers insurer-hosted rating supporting very high volumes and processing more than 55 million quotes a day. It enables the MGA to use a real-time Market data stream, and to make real-time changes in order to continually enhance its proposition and take swift advantage of business opportunities. The orchestration of data from multiple external sources advances underwriting capabilities and fraud prevention. Running 24/7, Equator uses RDT’s Release Hub technology to manage these live software changes without any disruption to service. The real-time market data stream ensures all quote data is stored via Azure Event Hubs for later analysis.
Panorama’s web and smart phone app services are built using Angular, Xamarin and native Apple and Android technologies. These services use secure, industry standard RESTFul APIs. Supporting OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect and delivered with the RDT Security Token Service, the Panorama APIs also enabling customers to build their own ecommerce offerings should they wish.
Access to data, insights and analysis is key to the success of MGAs. Horizon provides a wealth of data collection, manipulation, management and analysis capabilities. Real-time data feeds, processed by Stream Analytics, provide real-time dashboards of quote data. Raw quote, policy and claim data flows into Azure Data Lake storage. The Horizon Azure Data warehouse, integrated with Azure Data Factory, provides an end-to-end view across current and historic data.
Kitsune’s Managing Director Trevor Bowers said: “RDT put together a compelling proposition to develop our rating hub, policy administration system and data warehouse, which provides Kitsune with a fully integrated platform capable of supporting our business in an agile and flexible way.
“We’ve worked closely with the RDT team to build the capability we require to succeed. We found them incredibly amenable and pragmatic to work with and we’re looking forward to building a productive partnership with them going forward.”
RDT’s CEO Mark Bates said: “Atlas is our cloud-based insurance platform built on Microsoft’s Azure Service Fabric. It provides an overarching solution built from micro services, providing the insurer or MGA with a highly scalable and robust infrastructure on which to build their business models. We are delighted that Brightside recognises the competitive advantage it can deliver. Partnering with such a forward-thinking organisation gives us the opportunity to continue to break new ground for the insurance industry and we’re looking forward to supporting Kitsune as they build and grow their business.”