When I founded Unqork, the Fulfillment Platform for Financial Services, in April of last year, I knew that there was an opportunity to transform the sector. Starting with insurance, we created a platform and an industry-wide utility focused on collecting accurate client information and the near-instant fulfillment of new customer orders of financial products. The result is an exceptional customer experience that also dramatically cuts processing and operating costs. In order to have that kind of an impact, we needed to tackle the biggest concerns that I had as a technology executive at both Metlife and Citigroup–speed to market, easy integration to legacy systems, deep analytic capabilities and the highest level of data security.
The Unqork platform addresses all of these big items while unleashing the power of end-to-end digitization. Its patent-pending technology surfaces product and underwriting rules to the point of sales using a no-code, configure-once approach without any changes to legacy systems. It also delivers an exceptional front-end agent and consumer experience, and an AI driven backend that guarantees fast and clean submissions through heavy use of machine learning.
In our first eight months, we have had the privilege of putting our practice into production with some amazing Fortune 100 clients that have signed up across an array of financial product types.
Unqork’s ability to exceed client expectations while simultaneously innovating and scaling to transform an industry is dependent on great technology partners. Unqork needed a database service that had the right mix of security, reliability, flexibility, and speed to fulfill their needs, while passing all internal IT risk assessments. MongoDB Atlas delivered that to us.
Why Atlas?
I became familiar with MongoDB while working at Citibank - we started prototyping with it in 2011. When I moved over to Metlife, we built multiple projects on MongoDB including the MetLife Wall and Symphony. Over the past 5 years, MongoDB has proven to be a product that works. I trust the team building the MongoDB Atlas platform, and I know the service can keep up with us.
One of the big things that drew us to MongoDB Atlas over the other Database as a Service (DBaaS) providers was the security features. When we partner up with a client, we take over and support their most critical processes and data assets. We therefore need everything encrypted in transit and in storage throughout the entire platform. Atlas allows each of our clients to have their own unique MongoDB instance with their own test-production-staging environments. We take advantage of the managed backups in Atlas. The backups run continuously against our data, with full snapshots taken every 6 hours, and we have the option to move to every hour in the future. This provides us the highest levels of data protection and disaster recovery.
Atlas also gives us the ability to run our database on multiple clouds through the same service. Our customers need a service that supports both AWS or Azure. With Atlas, we have the freedom from lock-in – each client can choose where they are most comfortable hosting their data.
In order to offer the most isolated and secure options for our customers, we spin up a unique environment per customer, each split into development, test, and production. MongoDB Atlas, with its heavy emphasis on automation, makes is possible with just a few clicks.
Given our demanding customer base and its unique requirements, there was no question in our mind that only MongoDB could help us deliver a flexible, scalable, and secure data environment that is critical to our business. We have the utmost confidence around the quality of the product and the team, and we knew they will be with us for the entire journey.
Watch the video to learn more about how Unqork is building their business on MongoDB Atlas
About the author - Gary Hoberman
Gary Hoberman is CEO and Founder of Unqork Inc. Gary was formerly Executive Vice President and CIO of MetLife. In this role, Hoberman managed technology for MetLife’s businesses throughout Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Hoberman focuses on driving emerging technologies to leapfrog the insurance industry ahead.
Hoberman has more than 19 years of experience in leading application development within financial services. Prior to MetLife, Hoberman was Managing Director within Citigroup’s Operations and Technology group where he was an award-winning innovator, leading multiple patents across mobile, e-Commerce and social media.
Hoberman graduated from the Stern School of Business at NYU and also served as an NYU adjunct instructor in advanced computer sciences.