In 2021, we began our involvement in the Equity Release market, taking over the stewardship and governance of API Standard designs for quotes and KFI from Iress, and joining the Equity Release Council.
Over the course of the year, we collaborated with our Equity Release API Standards Governance Group. To ensure that the Standards supported a wider range of medical and lifestyle quotes and KFI scenarios and met the collective needs of the industry. A single API build across the industry ensures that wasteful redevelopment is cut out and is both time and cost-efficient. This year, we released the Equity Release Quotes and KFI OpenAPI and JSON Standards. These API ‘templates’ make it easier than ever for advisers and providers to understand the benefits of digitally integrating critical high-volume processes.
A change request submitted by a Standard user indicated that when using this Standard with a sourcing engine partner, there wasn’t enough information in the quote response to show the maximum Loan to Value (LTV) and lending limit for each product. This made it impractical for the requestor (sourcing engine) to compare products by LTV or by the maximum available to borrow when the quote request included a specific initial advance and/or cash reserve. Therefore, Criterion has updated and published Equity Release Quotes and KFI 1.1 Provisional Build 1 to include two new data items to the calculated results section of any successful or near miss quote responses:
- Maximum LTV percentage;
- Maximum amount to borrow.
We will continue to work in collaboration with our Governance Group and other industry stakeholders to evolve and refine these Standards, so that APIs keep pace with consumer needs and industry innovation.
