General

When it comes to insurance verification, there are a few key things you need to know.

The process

First and foremost, insurance verification is the process of confirming that an individual has insurance coverage. This can be done through a variety of means, but typically involves contacting the insurance company directly.

There are a few different types of insurance that you may need to verify. The most common is health insurance, but you may also need to verify auto insurance, homeowners’ insurance, or renter’s insurance. Each type of insurance has its own process for verification, so it’s important to be familiar with the process for each type of insurance that you’re verifying.

COI

One of the most important things to remember when verifying insurance is to get a Certificate of Insurance (COI). A COI is a document that verifies that an insurance policy exists and that it meets certain standards. Be sure to get a COI from the insurance company before you begin the verification process.

Without a COI, you may not be able to verify that the insurance policy exists or that it meets the required standards.

Other steps

There are a few other things to keep in mind when verifying insurance. First, you’ll need to make sure that you have the correct information for the individual you’re verifying. This includes their name, date of birth, social security number, and policy number.

You’ll also need to know the dates of coverage for the policy. These are typically listed on the COI. Finally, you’ll need to contact the insurance company directly to verify the policy.

In conclusion

The insurance verification process can seem daunting, but it’s important to remember a few key things. With the right preparation, you can make sure that you have the correct information and confirm that an individual has insurance coverage.

By getting a COI, you can also be sure that the policy meets the necessary standards. With a little bit of effort, you can make sure that your insurance verification process is a success.

In this blog post, we discussed insurance verification and what you need to know about it. We covered topics such as the different types of insurance you may need to verify and how to get a COI. We also discussed some key things to remember when verifying insurance. By following these tips, you can make sure that your insurance verification process is a success.

Why choose LenderDock?

LenderDock is the leading provider of online Property and Casualty Insurance policy verification and automated lien holder process management services. Through a lightweight integration, you can now couple specific policyholder data with LenderDock and instantly present third-party financial institutions with verifiable policy information in real-time.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – June 20, 2022 – LenderDock Inc. and Palomar Insurance (Palomar) have announced a new partnership that strategically supports the goal of having a comprehensive lienholder process automation solution by fully digitizing lienholder verifications, mortgagee correction requests, and escrow payments.

As the company continues to expand, finding a solution that reduces operational costs related to mortgagee communication has been an ongoing effort for Palomar. Having a single provider that addresses the variety of tasks and requests from banks and lenders was pivotal in their decision. Recently, more and more time has been spent manually processing proof of insurance verifications, mass mortgagee change requests, and escrow billing errors. These tasks are impediments to the company’s growth.

In addition to utilizing LenderDock’s Verifi™ and Correxion™ base platform, Palomar looks to implement LenderDock’s Notifi™ and LenderPymts™ services which will facilitate the electronic delivery of loss payee, billing notifications, and digital escrow payment reconciliations.

Palomar is a rapidly growing and innovative insurer that provides specialty insurance to residential and commercial customers in underserved markets. Focusing on earthquake, hurricane, and flood insurance, they leverage proprietary data analytics and a modern approach to deliver unparalleled products and services.

“Palomar is an insurer partner that sees the value of new technology and the impact that it makes when tackling outdated workflows and business processes. We are excited about the opportunity to support their continued growth and expansion.” Frank Eubank, LenderDock CEO

Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, LenderDock Inc. is the leading provider of online Property and Casualty Insurance policy verification and automated lien holder process management services. The policy verification-as-a-service (VaaS) platform offers banks, lenders and all financial third parties the ability to digitally verify and correct home and auto policy-related data in real-time.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, – June 15, 2022 – On Wednesday, LenderDock Inc. and Grange Insurance Association (GrangeAssociation) announced a new partnership that advances the goal of an all-digital lien holder process automation solution by fully digitizing lien holder verifications and mortgagee correction requests.

Grange receives a high volume of calls and policy change requests from lenders that monopolize the time of their Customer Service representatives and Operations team members. They have struggled to manage the volume of large lists received from lenders notifying them of the need to update lien holder information on their policies.

Without an automated and standardized process, it had forced them to review each policy and manually make changes within their system. Due to the number of mortgage transactions in the last few years, they would likely be forced to hire additional staff just to keep up. Yet this is how it has been done at Grange for more than a decade. They needed to find a way for them to better utilize their internal resources for more meaningful activities.

The decision to partner with LenderDock’s cloud-based lien holder process automation platform was based on their long-term strategic objective of improving their operational efficiencies. This partnership’s aim is to help drive down costs, save valuable time and conserve internal resources.

Founded in 1894, Grange Insurance Association has grown into a regional mutual insurance company serving the needs of farming families, “Main Street” communities in urban and suburban markets. They currently offer services in California, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.

“We are thrilled to be partnered with Grange Insurance. They have a long history of being very customer-centric and adapting to the changing market. We are excited to help them leverage new technology that will help accomplish their goals of securing cost savings and operational efficiencies.” – Travis Rodak, LenderDock CTO

Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, LenderDock Inc. is the leading provider of online Property and Casualty Insurance policy verification and automated lien holder process management services. The policy verification-as-a-service (VaaS) platform offers banks, lenders and all financial third parties the ability to digitally verify and correct home and auto policy-related data in real-time.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – June 13, 2022 – LenderDock Inc. and Hippo Insurance (NYSE: HIPO) announced a new partnership that advances the goal of an all-digital lienholder process automation solution by fully digitizing lienholder verifications and mortgagee correction requests.

Hippo has made a concerted effort to focus on improving the customer experience and mitigating friction in providing payment information for escrow billing.

Ease of use and data accuracy were also important enhancements the company is looking for. Despite having implemented its own basic lender portal over a year ago, the company decided to find a more robust and comprehensive solution. Their decision to partner with LenderDock’s cloud-based lienholder process automation platform was due to how closely it aligned with Hippo’s key business objectives; drive better customer experience and reduce manual activity as they scale.

Founded in 2015, the Palo Alto, CA-based insurance company is an Insurtech leader that uses technology to streamline the homeowner’s insurance process. Hippo is currently available in 37 states with more coming soon. The company plans for significant growth and has more than 620 employees, spread across locations in Austin and Dallas, Texas, Palo Alto, Calif., Bedminster, N.J., and Tel Aviv.

“Hippo Insurance embodies the spirit of technology and the critical role it plays in advancing growth, service, and operational efficiencies. It is exciting to work with a partner that shares the same vision of how cloud-based automation solutions are delivering real results in driving down operational costs and boosting internal efficiencies.” – Frank Eubank, LenderDock CEO

Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, LenderDock Inc. is the leading provider of online Property and Casualty Insurance policy verification and automated lien holder process management services. The policy verification-as-a-service (VaaS) platform offers banks, lenders, and all financial third parties the ability to digitally verify and correct home and auto policy-related data in real-time.

Salt Lake City, Utah, – February 16, 2022 – LenderDock Inc., Universal Insurance Holdings (NYSE: UVE), Olympus Insurance, Cabrillo Coastal, and Citizens Property Insurance Corp. announced a new partnership that advances the goal of a fully digital lienholder process optimization solution by automating on-demand lienholder verifications and mortgagee correction requests.

LenderDock’s innovative policy Verification-as-a-Service platform and suite of services eliminate millions of unwanted lender-originated phone calls, emails, faxes, and letters while attaining the highest digital delivery of escrow billing and interested-party notifications in the industry. The complete end-to-end solution provides significant cost savings and operational efficiencies for insurance providers.

“LenderDock’s overall objective is to give insurance providers a complete end-to-end solution that drives down costs and sunsets antiquated and obsolete business processes that distract from serving, supporting and retaining customers.

In today’s competitive landscape, we are streamlining a way for carriers and insurance providers to get back to the business of focusing exclusively on their policyholders.” – Frank Eubank, LenderDock CEO

With headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, LenderDock is the leading provider of online Property and Casualty Insurance policy verification and automated lien holder data management services. The policy verification-as-a-service (VaaS) platform offers banks, lenders, and financial third parties the ability to electronically verify and correct home and auto policy-related data in real-time.

For more information, please call Frank Eubank at 801-358-7303 or email [email protected].

1. The Changing Work Landscape

Let’s look at the changing work landscape and its impact on auto sales, travel, and accident severity.

According to a survey by Workplace.com, 37% of US employees will work remotely in 2022.

The changing nature of work along with the cash pumped into the economy from federal aid prompted many people to buy their very first vehicle in 2020.

New vehicle registrations in New York City alone rose 37 percent between August and October 2020.

This year, U.S. auto sales are expected to rise from 15 million to 15.7 million, with short supplies limiting sales but boosting pricing power. Both point to strong recovery for the auto industry.

In 2020 and ’21 we saw unprecedented declines in miles driven. The new omicron variant is the big unknown in forecasting traffic volume in 2022, with inflation also clouding the picture.  Through September government data shows miles driven still down 5 percent from 2019, and it is anticipated that miles driven will continue to recover in 2022, but where and when people are driving will be different.

2. The Growth of ADAS

The second trend is the increase in the overall number of vehicles equipped with ADAS and connected car technologies.

According to data from MarketWatch, ADAS is anticipated to rise at a considerable rate between 2022 and 2027.

Recent reports from OEM’s suggest that nearly 80% of vehicles purchased in the U.S. market between Sep 1, 2020, and Aug 31, 2021, were minimally equipped with automatic emergency braking.

Access to that connected car data is a central part of the Right to Repair legislation now making its way through the courts. And with more vehicles now coming equipped with semi-autonomous features, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s interest in understanding more about the impacts of these systems on real-world driving drove the issuance last year of a Standing General Order outlining reporting requirements the OE’s and other companies must now meet.

3. Climate Change

The third trend is Climate Change. The P&C insurance industry has been at the forefront of feeling the effects of climate change, as the number and severity of severe storms have grown.  And more frequent catastrophic events combined with evolving regulatory requirements could threaten company business models and make insuring some risks unaffordable for customers or unfeasible for insurers.

4. Changing Customer Experiences

Next are changing customer expectations where digital, mobile, and personalized experiences have become table stakes.

According to a recent study of P&C insurance customers conducted by JD Powers, while the industry is investing heavily in back-end technologies like straight-through processing to improve the claims experience, there’s still room for improvement.

The study found that while the technology is there, adoption may be a barrier.

5. Complexity

Our last trend is complexity. The year ahead promises more vehicle technology such as ADAS, more data, and more disruptive entrants turning heads and turning traditional business models upside down. In 2022, the industry will continue to turn to technology and connected systems to simplify and streamline processes to ultimately create better customer experiences.

The original, unedited article was first featured on cccis.com

PropertyCasualty360 sat down with business development coach Kitty Ambers to discuss the process of change management ― especially in a world in which change is being forced on insurance professionals. Ambers has held several top executive positions with insurance trade organizations, and she is a member of the PropertyCasualty360 editorial advisory board. Currently, she serves as chief growth officer for AVYST, an InsurTech that streamlines policy submissions.

PC360: What is “change management”?

Kitty Ambers: The term “change management” sounds daunting and clinical. So I like to call it “managing change” instead.

In short, to make change happen, you have to do the work. There is no replacement for actually doing the work. It’s no different than starting something new. For example, if I’m going to start an agency, I have to dig in, do the training, attract markets, and read the policies.

PC360: Can you be more specific about what you mean by “doing the work”?

Ambers: I’ve distilled managing change into what I call “The 5 Ds.”

1. Decision: Think about some of the things we’ve been forced to do differently today with the pandemic. That’s change — doing something different. What is the process we instinctively went through to get there? We had to make a decision. It might be an external or internal thing that forces us to try something new; the old way’s not working. Sometimes it can be scary. What if you get bad news from the doctor? You will have to change something. It might take weeks and months, but you’re having to change because of a situation. Or maybe your flight is canceled. You have decisions to make.

2. Design: Next, you have to design a solution. What are the steps you have to take? We have to think about an action to get where we want to be. We can get really technical in designing what the solution looks like. We’re talking here about planning.

3. Deploy: Now it’s time to do something. How will we implement this decision? Who’s involved? What are the roles and responsibilities? How long will it take? What are the costs? Who will continue it? People get stuck here. They don’t implement. Execute the plan and deal with whatever comes next.

4. Deal: Part of managing change will involve dealing with distractions. It could be a naysayer employee when you’re implementing a new technology solution. Or it could be the child at home who doesn’t want to get up at 7 a.m. and do his schoolwork at the kitchen table. During the ‘design’ stage, these potential objections often come to the surface.

5. Drive: This is the momentum piece. Once you start to change, you very much want to keep it going. One change leads to another change, which leads to yet another change. And so on. We start to open our horizons.

Making time for change

PC360: Why does managing change seem so difficult?

Ambers: Because people are people. They’re too busy on the wheel to step off and look around.

If there is any benefit to the COVID-19 lockdown, it’s that a lot of people have paused and taken an inventory of “Hey, what’s important?” With my businesses, we are now so much more productive when we’re not running all over the country because we’re having meaningful one-on-one conversations on the phone and on video calls. People can actually turn on their computers, have a productive conversation, and make decisions. People are available, they’re listening, they’re connected, and they’re willing to jump on a call. They’re making lemonade out of lemons.

PC360: You’ve said you like the Michael Jordan book, “I Can’t Accept Not Trying.”

KA: His book is really based around fundamentals. He emphasizes, “The minute you get away from fundamentals, the bottom falls out of your game.”

When you think about change, you have to be secure on the direction you want to go. Another quote I like is from Jimmy Dean: “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” I can swerve around that pothole, or I can plow right into it because I don’t want to change. People are stubborn.

Are you prepared?

PC360: What about independent agents — how are they managing change these days?

Ambers: Where it becomes most obvious is to ask, “How prepared were agencies to support a remote workforce?” That, in turn, points to something else: How prepared are you for a natural disaster scenario? How quickly can you spin up a support desk for your agency in the event your office is blown away?

This is a great opportunity to test those disaster-recovery plans. A lot of folks have struggled there because it’s been on the back burner. The agents who hadn’t tested their business-continuation plans are having to implement on the fly, which is hard. It’s not as simple as thinking I can just take my laptop and be fine. It might be fine for a snowstorm, but not in a pandemic.

What are some big lessons here? I think it’s critical to think through answers to serious questions we’ve been faced with:

  • How do I show up?
  • How do we stay connected?
  • How do we communicate?
  • How do we keep morale up?
  • How do we care for our clients and reach out to them?
  • Do we have a tool that’s easy to deploy messaging to clients and staff?
  • Have we collected all the cell phone numbers and email addresses?

This has been a real test of an agency’s “emergency broadcast system.”

It’s about leadership

PC360: Why is change easier for some organizations?

Ambers: Having a fundamental core value of being agile is key. That’s what change is. It’s being able to pivot.

I also think we should look to other places on how they’re managing change. For example, what are restaurants doing to be resourceful? Many are doing carryout only. Grocery stores are retooling their traffic flow, with one-way aisles. They’re adopting new floor plans. What can we adopt for our firms?

If we look around, we realize the whole idea that change is constant is true. So don’t be so resistant. Go with the flow.

PC360: What is the most important piece of managing change?

Ambers: Leadership.

It’s not that we can’t change. It just gets scary when you have the intentional conversation about how we change. We say, “We’re going to change.” It has to be part of the culture. We focus too much on process versus outcomes. If you do this it’s going to make your life easier. Good leaders do this. It’s intuitive.

We are adaptive people by nature; if you follow Darwin and nature at all. Look at the new species that came about. That’s change. Nobody stopped the world and said, “We have this new thing.” It just evolved. As a leader, if you think of evolution as opposed to revolution, you will have better results in the end. Don’t do the herky-jerky, stop this and start that. It’s just a flow. Why not always keep your eyes out for something new?

Why do we make change sound so punitive as opposed to positive? It all goes back to leadership.

The original, unedited article was first featured on www.propertycasualty360.com

LenderDock Inc., the premier provider of online services for Property and Casualty Insurance policy verification and automated lienholder process management, is excited to unveil its latest collaboration with Cabrillo Coastal General Insurance Agency, LLC.

“We couldn’t be more excited to be partnering with the Cabrillo Coastal team in order to help them reach their goal of eliminating all the unwanted phone calls, emails and manual touch points with banks and lenders,” said Frank Eubank, LenderDock CEO.

“LenderDock’s suite of automation solutions will fast track their digital services footprint while reducing costs across their support teams,” Eubank added.

Cabrillo Coastal will implement the use of LenderDock’s base platform (VERiFi™, LIENSure™, LENDERDocs™) alongside the NOTiFi™ solution.

VERiFi™ is a real-time insurance policy verification system designed for verifiers and lenders. With VERiFi™, phone calls for policy verification are a thing of the past, making the process faster and more efficient.

The second tool, LIENSure™, automates the process of updating policy information by allowing lenders to submit corrections directly to the carrier. This enables carriers or providers to process the updates efficiently according to their own procedures.

The final base suite tool, LENDERDocs™ provides electronic and real-time access to important policy-related documents such as EOIs, Certificates, and others to financial third parties. This helps streamline the process of obtaining and sharing these documents, making it easier for business partners to manage their policy information.

Cabrillo Coastal will also use LenderDock’s NOTiFi™ solution. NOTiFi™ is a system that facilitates the exchange of insurance information among a variety of parties including insurers, lenders, leasing companies, government agencies, and trackers.

About LenderDock Inc.

LenderDock Inc., with its headquarters located in Salt Lake City, Utah, is the industry leader in automated lien holder process management services as well as online property and casualty insurance policy verification. Banks, lenders, and financial third parties can digitally verify and update home and car insurance-related data in real-time using the policy verification-as-a-service (VaaS) platform.

Companies are moving to the cloud for speed and agility. But many find they are not moving fast enough to reap the promised benefits.

It’s an old story by now—the cloud is the computing of the future. What has become evident in recent years, however, is cloud has established itself as the computing of the present—and the agile IT architecture it has enabled is critical to any organization’s efforts to increase efficiency and business resilience. In other words, transitioning IT capabilities to the cloud is seen as an (if not the) critical success factor to realizing digital transformation goals. An MIT Technology Review Insights survey has found that while an overwhelming majority of technology decision-makers are using the cloud to operate with more speed and agility, many believe they are not moving fast enough to achieve those benefits. Here are the main findings: 

Companies are looking to the cloud for speed and agility. Nine out of 10 respondents say they are trying to move their infrastructure to the cloud to run as quickly and nimbly as their business objectives require. Two interdependent drivers—scaling up infrastructure quickly and increasing business agility and speed to market—were cited as the top cloud adoption drivers by respondents. In reimagining their customer engagement models, forward-thinking insurance executives have identified ecosystems as essential to future success.

Migration schedules are challenged by complex integration. While respondents want to use the cloud to enable more responsive operations, nearly half, or 47%, of surveyed executives believe their organizations are not moving to the cloud on schedule. Most of those have found migrating workloads, data, and operational processes more difficult than anticipated. Another layer of complexity: integrating a tangle of on-premises and cloud systems and cloud applications. Moving to the cloud, while offering a step-change in the cost and capability of IT resources, is not a simple process.

The bottom line is that insurers may need to become more digital, efficient, and agile if they are to find new revenue streams, boost customer engagement, achieve sustainable profitability, and generate higher returns on equity. Incremental enhancements in disparate parts of the business or traditional approaches to cost-cutting are not likely to work. In fact, for the top 10 auto insurers, expense ratios are at their lowest level in a decade – according to S&P Market Intelligence¹ -, suggesting that further cost-cutting won’t be enough to expand growth. Still, most insurers have been reluctant to invest in large-scale transformation, partly due to past change initiatives that failed to deliver the expected results.

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The approaches to modern architecture are diverse. There is tremendous diversity in the technology and tools that organizations are deploying to modernize their IT capabilities: roughly half of respondents indicate they are deploying application programming interfaces (APIs), containers, or serverless architecture. Microservices are also fairly widely used, and adopting multiple technologies is the norm—the average respondent indicates their organization is adopting or planning to adopt at least two technologies. Organizations are adopting multiple approaches to modernizing IT infrastructure because cloud migration requires a radical reorganization of infrastructure and development teams, processes, and resources. They need to be reworked into a continuous integration, architecture, and delivery process, through which new capabilities are constantly deployed, evaluated, and refined. 

Collaboration is an important part of the digitally transformed organization. With technical transformation comes operational and organizational change. More than three-quarters of the survey’s respondents believe that better cross-organizational collaboration is the greatest capability enabled by their digital transformation efforts.  

The inevitiabilty of cloud migrations

Moving workloads to the cloud has become common practice for organizations seeking to achieve enhanced performance and cost efficiencies. Only 8% of survey respondents indicate they have not yet begun to transition to the cloud. “The cloud is one of the major areas of modernization within IT infrastructure today,” says Ed Bednar, an associate director at the global consultancy Deloitte who leads the company’s cloud infrastructure efforts. Cloud computing lets any company do what previously only tech giants could do, he says. “It democratizes access to infrastructure—infrastructure that is highly scalable and secure—and allows service providers to operate their data centers and the infrastructure that they run wildly effectively, in terms of costs.”

Within insurance, ecosystem-based models typically enable interactions across the value chain by leveraging a differentiated infrastructure to allow for better service offerings, richer customer interactions, and higher rates of automation. Typically, insurers benefit from ecosystems via:

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Many legacy tools are really not meant for the type of cloud tools that are available.  So companies have to think about moving to a whole new type of infrastructure to enable fresh capabilities.  The answer for most is an API-based approach.  The benefits can be many including overcoming the need to constantly worry about business rules, security, and data collection processes.

In an API-based approach, the business rules, related data, and compliance requirements are embedded into the collaboration between teams and external partners enabled by the new architecture. 

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The original version of this article was first published on www.technologyreview.com



In little more than a decade, application programming interfaces (APIs) have transitioned from relative obscurity to become the “digital glue” that empowers developers to create new software applications, partnerships, and even new businesses. This business-to-developer (B2D) market is quickly becoming one of the fastest-growing opportunities within cloud computing.

An API is a specification (think of it as a contract) for how two pieces of software talk to each other and exchange data. Web 2.0 companies were the first to recognize APIs – historically used by developers to help teams work without stepping on each other’s toes – as products to be shared with (and sold to) customers and partners. In just a few short years, APIs have become a crucial channel, attracting customers with the ability to extend products, helping partners deliver the value they promised, and growing the ecosystem as a whole.

In today’s world, having a strong API strategy isn’t just good software practice; it’s a powerful business practice. Amazon has built a multibillion-dollar revenue business in Amazon Web Services (AWS), leveraging powerful API-based elements such as EC2. Google Maps would be a much smaller business if the only access was through its website directly. Twitter has opened up an entire class of businesses and analytical modules by sharing its data API and platform. Even Salesforce.com – with over 800,000 developers and more than 2.5 million applications on the Force.com platform – proudly states that API calls drive more than 60 percent of total traffic to the site.

Empowering developers to build against your platform doesn’t just create value for partners; the API provider also wins by expanding the ecosystem, increasing retention, and driving up the value of the platform. Even more importantly, end customers win when all their products work seamlessly together. Take Box — its API-based integrations with popular applications like Salesforce.com, Yammer, Jive, Netsuite, or even custom internal applications make it easy for end-users to work with their files wherever they need them. Similarly, DocuSign’s API lets customers design e-signatures right into their workflows. For example, when a rep closes an opportunity in Salesforce, DocuSign can grab all the right data and automatically send out a contract for signature.

Another example is Twilio, where over 200,000 developers have built applications on top of their API-based communications service offering. Opening up for the first time what used to be a completely cloistered world of telecom boxes and copper wires, Twilio gives developers an easy way to use all the communication services we have on our phones (SMS, voice, Shortcodes, etc.) in web and mobile applications. This enables a slew of new use cases, from the SMS alerts you get from Uber when your car is arriving at highly customized call centers for Home Depot and others.

The common thread here is to take something that’s difficult (or just plain annoying) to do and make it easy for the developer to use, at a reasonable price — much like software as a service (SaaS) companies do for the B2B world, and consumer electronics do for you and me.

Companies like these have shown the value of executing a strong API strategy, and we likewise encourage our SaaS and PaaS (platform as a service) companies to do the same. We’re also seeing more companies finding success with an API-first approach to the B2D market. Layer in the fact that developers are rapidly building a new marketplace of API-driven mobile apps projected to be worth $25 billion in 2015, and we’re at a key moment in time for the API economy.

The original, unedited version of this article was first published on www.venturebeat.com.