Quick quotes

A quick quote allows customers to quickly get an estimate of the cost of an insurance policy by only providing a small amount of information. For example, given a property address and a date of birth we can (in principle) gather enough external data and make sensible assumptions to complete a Home Insurance question set and provide an estimated quote.

The Quick Quote API

The Quick Quote API /quickquote takes input risk data in a request and returns a quick quote as a response. The main difficulty when generating a quick quote is constructing the correct risk model (risk) which depends on the particular insurance product being quoted on. The risk model being passed must match the risk model expected by the insurance product declared in productReferenceID. The risk model is unstable as it can be changed whenever the product version changes. This may happen when an additional additional question needs to be added. For this reason, we expose a convenience endpoint /quickquote/frompartialrisk which allows you to only submit a number of well-known fields that are common across all insurance products.

Creating a quick quote from partial risk information

The endpoint /quickquote/frompartialrisk defines a number of well-known fields which can be passed in the request. These fields are all optional but each insurance product defines a minimum amount of information that must be supplied for the quick quote to succeed.

Well-known risk fieldFormatExample
coverStartDateDateTime*2025-12-31T00:00:00
firstNameStringIsobel
lastNameStringInsurer
dateOfBirthDateTime*2025-12-31T00:00:00.000
emailAddressString of type email address[email protected]
phoneNumberString01234567890
riskAddressUniqueReferenceString
riskAddress1String1 Anchor Road
riskAddress2StringKingsclere
riskProvinceReferenceIDString
riskProvinceString
riskTownStringNewbury
riskPostalCodeStringRG20 5NE
contactAddressUniqueReferenceString
contactAddress1String123 High Street
contactAddress2StringChieveley
contactProvinceReferenceIDString
contactProvinceString
contactTownStringNewbury
contactPostalCodeStringRG20 8UX
customFieldsObject

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  • Custom date format

To avoid ambiguity, Aventus does not accept timezone information on certain datetimes. This avoids the possibility of a date being interpreted differently in different timezones (e.g. a date of birth). Dates in this format should omit the timezone information, e.g. 2020-01-01T00:00:00.000.

Cover Start Date

The cover start date should be restricted to valid values for the product. For example, start date cannot be in the past and only up to 30 days in the future.

Addresses

Addresses follow a standard format. The fields in the partialRisk will map onto them, with the country set to the organizational default.

Specifying a cover type

Every insurance products has a set of cover types which describe different levels of cover. For example, a Home Insurance product might have a Buildings cover type, and a Contents cover type. Pass all the cover types which you want to get quick quotes for as an array. The response will contain a corresponding array of quote objects.

Supplying a partner ID

All quick quote endpoints need a partnerID to be supplied in the request. This ID is unique per partner and should have been provided to you by your account manager at Aventus.

Tracking customer conversion

Aventus allows you to pass a unique reference for each customer using partnerReference. This can be an internal GUID or similar ID that you use to uniquely identify a customer on your platform. When lifecycle events are delivered (such as policy purchase) or when reports are generated this ID can be used to track conversion of individual customers.

Custom Fields

To allow greater customization during the quick quote process, additional fields can be mapped for specific products. These must be configured on the Aventus Platform before they are available for use. Their configuration ensures that are compatible across product versions.

Processing the response

The response conforms to our response envelope. The data field contains an array of results corresponding to the cover types passed in the request. The format of the response is specified in the API Reference.

Each object in the data array specifies the cover type it's related to (coverType) as well as a status field which reports on the success of the quick quote. This can take three values, specified in the table below.

StatusDescription
SuccessfulThe quick quote was successful and the pricing information for the quote is specified in pricingPlans. The field declineReasons is null.
DeclinedThe quick quote was declined by the rating engine based on the information received (e.g. postcode not found). The pricingPlans field is null. The reason for being declined is contained in the declineReasons array, and there might be several reasons for being declined.
IncompleteDataThe quick quote could not be generated because there was insufficient information to generate a quote. This can happen when, for example, a data lookup isn't able to fill enough risk fields to pass to the rating engine. In this case, both pricingPlans and declineReasons are null.

The pricingPlans array, when populated, is an array containing an object for each pricing plan specified by the product. This could be, for example, an annual, single-payment plan, and a recurring monthly payment plan.

Reading the risk

All objects returned in the data array contain a risk object which specifies the exact risk data that was used to attempt to generate a quote. The risk model is defined per product and depends on the underwriting rules. We therefore recommend not binding strongly to this model as it can change as product version change.

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Retrieving the cover start and end date

Two useful fields that are contained within the risk object are coverStartDate and coverEndDate which specify on which dates the cover will start and end respectively. These fields are considered well-known and can be used safely. Their return format is standard RFC3339 but with the timezone omitted (e.g. "2010-01-01T12:00:00.0000000").