We’re excited to announce that Finch has partnered with isolved, a leading provider of human capital management (HCM) technology. Through this partnership, developers using Finch will soon be able to access employer data from isolved and partners in the isolved Network.

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As the #1 Unified Employment API, Finch is committed to creating a more accessible, open, and standardized future of employment technology—one in which all the tools employers use to manage their workforce can share data easily and automatically. To make this possible, we’re constantly growing our network of HRIS and payroll partners to sync the mission-critical data within these systems with the trusted third-party applications their customers are using to run their businesses.

So today, we’re thrilled to announce our latest partnership with isolved, the most trusted human capital management (HCM) partner.

“Partnerships with providers like isolved are critical to our mission at Finch. By collaborating closely with leading technologies like isolved, we’re empowering developers to build new, innovative tools that will help employers to manage their workforce more effectively and efficiently.” — Runae Lee, Head of Partnerships at Finch

What the partnership means for developers

Available through the isolved Marketplace, developers using Finch will soon be able to access organization and payroll data from isolved and write changes back to isolved’s payroll through Deductions. This bidirectional, evergreen access to employer data can be used to power innovative use cases across HR tech, benefits, and fintech:

• 401(k) and retirement providers – Use census and payroll data from isolved to streamline sponsor onboarding, automate 401(k) enrollment, and manage deductions on the employer’s behalf.

• Employee benefits administrators – Easily pull employee data to streamline employer onboarding, benefits enrollment, and deductions management.

• B2B fintech applications – Collect data to power financial insights, compensation benchmarking, equity programs, and much more.

• Insurance carriers – Stay up to date on ever-changing employer data to reduce premium leakage and unlock pay-as-you-go pricing.

• HR technology software – Deliver automated experiences, workforce insights, and KPI tracking to help your customers work more efficiently.

• Tax and compliance applications – Automate employee provisioning requests, streamline security certification processes, and determine tax credit eligibility based on employer data, pulled straight from the source.

Help us build our roadmap

Because of the breadth of the isolved Network, Finch will be rolling out support for providers in batches. Have a provider you want to see supported? Tell us which are most important to you so we can get to work on them first!

Not using Finch yet? Talk to sales to learn more about our API, or take it for a test drive yourself—your first five connections are free.

We are thrilled to announce that we have partnered with Rippling, an innovator in workforce management software. Now, approved developers can use Finch to read organization data from Rippling and get featured in Rippling’s highly competitive App Shop. This partnership is a major step toward realizing our mission: to make it easier for employers to share data across the suite of HR, Benefits, and Finance products they use.

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Today’s employers use dozens of software products to manage their workforce; but few of these products are able to share data directly. Maintaining complete and accurate data across these disconnected systems is an enormous challenge that hinders productivity and efficiency, especially among small or quickly scaling teams.

Finch recognizes this as the biggest problem facing the employment industry. 

“Finch and Rippling have approached the challenge of connecting employment infrastructure in complementary ways,” said Jeremy Zhang, CEO and Co-Founder of Finch. “This partnership will allow us to unite our efforts toward realizing Finch’s mission: to create a connected future of work where employers can seamlessly and automatically share data across the products they use to manage employees and track business KPIs.”

Rippling at a glance

Rippling is pioneering a new category of workforce management through its Unified Workforce Platform: a compound suite of products that together create the source of truth for employers. Rippling’s product offerings include systems of record like HRIS and payroll, as well as verticalized tools to manage Benefits, IT, Finance, and more.

In addition to its in-house products, Rippling offers integrations with 500+ software applications through its App Shop. 

The Finch + Rippling partnership 

With our partnership, approved developers will be able to access organization data from Rippling through Finch. Those developers will also be able to list their application on Rippling’s App Shop. 

Finch will submit the application to be listed on the App Shop on our developers’ behalf, so integrating with Rippling is as simple as integrating with any other Finch-supported provider. 

Benefits of integrating with Rippling through Finch 

Through an API integration with Rippling, developers using Finch will be afforded evergreen access to organization data, updated daily or on-demand. This continuous, direct access to the most up-to-date employee data can power innovative use cases across workforce management, employee engagement, learning and development, and more.

• Workforce Management — Automate and streamline HR teams’ tasks to help your customers improve efficiency. Automatically trigger on- and offboarding processes based on employment status, and quickly review benefit eligibility to manage enrollment. 

• Employee Engagement — Empower your customers to personalize their employee recognition programs and save time by automating rewards for milestones like birthdays and work anniversaries, or for achievements like promotions. 

• Learning & Development — Help employers navigate the development of their workforce by syncing their employee roster, automating enrollment in training, and customizing training requirements based on job title or department.

Integrate with Rippling through Finch

Finch’s Unified Employment API allows developers to access employee data across hundreds of HRIS and payroll systems, including Rippling, through a single integration. Talk to our sales team to get started, or sign up for free.

If you’re a provider, increase compatibility with third-party applications by partnering with Finch. Contact us for partnership information.

We’re delighted to announce our new partnership with Oyster, a leading global employment solution. This partnership takes us one step closer to our vision of democratizing access to employment data by supporting innovators who are creating an integrated experience for employers.

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Finch is on a mission to empower innovators to build the next generation of employment technology. Through our Unified Employment API, Finch unlocks instant access to employment data from hundreds of HRIS and payroll systems with a single integration—making it easier for developers to build useful tools for employers. 

Partnering with like-minded platforms is vital for Finch's success, which is why we’re thrilled to team up with Oyster, a leading global employment solution for compliantly hiring, paying, and providing benefits to employees around the globe.

“We’re beyond thrilled to partner with Oyster. We share a vision of empowering employers who onboard and support people around the world with the latest technology. Our partnership will help us deliver amazing integrated experiences for employers and accelerate innovation across the employment ecosystem." — Runae Lee, Head of Partnerships at Finch

Oyster at a glance

Recognized as a Leader among global employment platforms by G2, Oyster is trusted by thousands of businesses. These businesses rely on Oyster to simplify and automate hiring, onboarding, payroll, and employee rewards processes as well as to develop sustainable global talent strategies. As a popular Global Employment Platform (GEP), Oyster is designed to meet compliance standards in 180+ countries, which makes it a lucrative choice for global enterprises. 

Employers love Oyster because it provides access to deep local intelligence that can be used to build a competitive global employment strategy and a single platform to hire, onboard, pay, and care for talent without the need to open a legal entity in multiple countries. This saves time and costs, reduces administrative burdens, and simplifies compliance requirements associated with global hiring, payroll, benefits, and more. 

Oyster integrates with several HR tools including popular HRIS and ATS tools to help employers build custom workflows and improve team productivity.

Oyster and Finch: Shaping the future of employment

Oyster is committed to assisting innovators in creating solutions for a connected future of work, aligning well with Finch's mission to unify the fragmented employment ecosystem. This partnership highlights our shared goal and dedication to advancing employment technology.

Navigating a closed Employment Ecosystem

The rapid growth of the HR tech landscape over the past decade has caused employment data to be dispersed and siloed across thousands of payroll and HR systems—causing inefficiencies and blocking innovation across the employment ecosystem. To create a seamless user experience, HR systems must be able to interact with one another and share information easily.

However, building integrations and forming 1:1 partnerships is an uphill battle that requires a considerable investment of time, money, and talent, both upfront and on an ongoing basis.

What the Finch + Oyster partnership means for the future of employment

By fostering a close relationship with Oyster, Finch continues its mission to democratize access to the employment ecosystem. Together, we aim to lessen the integration woes for developers and employers in several ways:

1. Enable developers to unlock employment data in minutes: For years, data silos have been a burden on tech applications in the employment space, requiring an outsized investment in building 1:1 integrations and siphoning resources from product-enhancing initiatives. 

With this new partnership, approved developers can use Finch’s unified API to seamlessly read data from Oyster, enabling innovative use cases and solutions. Businesses can now focus 100% of their efforts on building tools that help employers create a productive, engaged workforce. At the same time, by partnering with Finch, Oyster can expand its network of developers and accelerate innovation for SMBs. 

“Delivering an integrated experience to our customers is the driving force behind all of our partnership efforts at Oyster. Working with Finch is a great opportunity for us to simplify integration-based partnerships and encourage more developers to connect with Oyster, ultimately providing a better user experience for our shared customers. We’re excited to support innovation and tackle unique use cases across the employment tech space with Finch.” — Mark Frein, Chief Operating Officer at Oyster

2. Create an integrated employer experience: Employers are turning away from data silos and manual data entry practices and looking to invest in integrated experiences in the workplace. This partnership presents a great opportunity for developers to use Finch’s API to create a connected experience or embed Oyster’s global hiring functionality into their platform.

With Finch Connect, employers can now connect their Oyster accounts and start syncing data with other third-party applications in their tech stack in a fraction of the time—eliminating hundreds of hours each pay period required to manually assist HR workflows.

How the integration works

Developers who build B2B applications with Finch can now enable users to connect their Oyster accounts through a simple workflow that is baked into their application. Using Finch Connect, employers can safely grant permission to access data housed in Oyster to the third-party applications they use.

Finch Connect can be displayed at any point in an application’s customer flow and handles credential validation, multi-factor authentication, and error handling for each system Finch supports—including Oyster. With Finch Connect, employer onboarding time is significantly reduced compared to antiquated integration methods—making it simpler for Oyster users to onboard with any third-party platform they need. 

Once the employer has completed the process with Finch Connect, our Unified Employment API starts syncing data between the two platforms, enabling various use cases. By establishing data flow from Oyster to third-party applications, this integration can enable use cases like these: 

• Automated employee onboarding in training modules, dashboards, and directories based on criteria like start date or title
• Increased employee engagement through automated rewards and recognition triggered by milestones like anniversaries and promotions
• Simplified benefits eligibility checks and enrollment processes
• And much more

Learn more about Oyster’s API by visiting their integrations page. Or, if you’re building your Oyster integration via Finch, check our developer docs.

Unlock employment data with Finch

As the #1 Unified Employment API, Finch allows users to access organization, payroll, and deduction data across multiple payroll and HRIS systems, including Oyster, through a single integration. Talk to our sales team to learn how we can help.

If you’re an HRIS or payroll provider, increase compatibility with third-party applications by partnering with Finch. Contact us for partnership information.

We’re excited to announce our partnership with Gusto, one of the nation’s leading payroll, benefits, and HR services providers for SMBs. With this new partnership, approved developers can use Finch to seamlessly read and write data to Gusto — in addition to hundreds of other HRIS and payroll systems. By increasing the total number of developers that can integrate with Gusto, either through a direct partnership or through Finch’s unified employment API, we can empower innovators to build the next generation of HR technology. 

As the HR tech landscape has grown, it’s become increasingly important that systems be able to interact with one another. But, building integrations across a wide variety of HR platforms can be costly and time-consuming for developers. Finch makes it easier for a developer to quickly integrate with 200+ HR platforms via their unified API, enabling innovation in the market.  

“Developers want to integrate with every HR system their customers use, but with so many players in the space, this can be a real challenge," said Jeremy Zhang, CEO and cofounder at Finch. “In the same way that Plaid created greater interoperability with financial service providers, Finch is emerging as the unified infrastructure underpinning the employment ecosystem. As we enter this new partnership with Gusto, we’re excited to work together to build more deeply integrated experiences for employers.”

As we enter this new partnership with Gusto, we’re excited to work together to build more deeply integrated experiences for employers. (Finch)

Gusto is a well-loved nationwide brand with over 300,000 employers using its platform for payroll, benefits, and HR services. Gusto supports integrations with hundreds of solutions in the SMB space, and launched an embedded payroll solution mid-2021 enabling other companies to offer its payroll services inside their app or service. By partnering with Finch, Gusto can expand their network of developers and accelerate innovation for SMBs.

"Our partnership with Finch creates a new way for developers to integrate with Gusto and will help to accelerate more innovation in the HR space," said Andy Toung, Chief Strategy Officer of Gusto. “By supporting more integrated experiences, we can solve real pain points for our customers allowing them to better care for their teams.”  

Our partnership with Finch creates a new way for developers to integrate with Gusto and will help to accelerate more innovation in the HR space. (Gusto)

For existing customers

Finch and Gusto have been working behind the scenes to upgrade your experience. OAuth, SSO, and performance improvements are some of the exciting features of our new integration. In partnership with Gusto, we’ve agreed to migrate users to the new experience by November 30th. Your Developer Support representative will be in touch to support your migration process, which you can start by heading to this migration guide.

For new customers

As the #1 Unified Employment API, Finch makes it possible to access organization, payroll and benefits data across 200+ payroll and HRIS systems — all through a single integration. We are proud to provide Gusto developers with another way to share data between your customers’ Gusto accounts and your application. Want to learn more? Set up time to talk with our sales team here.

Today, we’re thrilled to announce that Finch has joined the UKG Partner Network, which currently boasts more than 350 solution and services partners. By fostering a close relationship with UKG, Finch has again advanced its mission to empower innovators by facilitating a more open and connected global employment data ecosystem for the world’s innovators. 

Expanding their reach

As a leading provider of HR, payroll, and workforce management solutions—one that is known for transforming businesses through innovation—UKG receives hundreds of applications from potential partners every year. 

But forming partnerships takes a considerable resource investment, both upfront and on an ongoing basis. So UKG set out to find a strategic partner who could help them expand their reach and unlock new growth by supporting the world’s innovators.

Finding a path forward with Finch

When the UKG team discovered Finch, they realized they had found a way to multiply the number of developers they served.

Finch is a unified API built for the employment ecosystem. It not only makes connecting with UKG possible, but also streamlines the integration process for developers. After building an integration with Finch and securing permission from their customers, developers can instantly access the employment data housed in UKG Pro® and UKG Ready®—alongside more than 200 other HRIS and payroll systems. 

Now that UKG has forged a partnership with Finch, UKG can continue to work with strategic partners through 1:1 integrations and enable innovative developers to build revolutionary solutions via Finch’s unified API. This new, multi-pronged approach to partnerships gives all companies, both big and small, the ability to access their customers’ employment data. 

Elevating the customer experience

With multiple ways to integrate, a larger percentage of the developer community can now connect to UKG—a fact that delights the UKG partnerships team. 

“Our partnership ecosystem helps us support our customers by providing them with seamless solutions that improve business outcomes and inspire people,” shared Mike May, vice president of technology partnerships at UKG. “Partners like Finch allow us to extend our capabilities with technology that elevates the workplace experience and meets the needs of people throughout their life work journey.”

What will you ship? 

Ready to build? Sign up today to get access to the API keys you need to innovate. Not quite there yet? Reach out to our sales team to learn more. 

Learn more about our partnership with UKG on the UKG Marketplace.

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This post was updated on Nov 6, 2023 to reflect support for Finch's integration with UKG Ready®.

Finch is on a mission to empower innovators to access the global employment data ecosystem, so they can create cutting-edge solutions for employers. But we can’t do it alone. Partnerships play a crucial role in our work. That’s why, today, we’re excited to announce that Finch has joined Paycor’s network of more than 200 technology partners.

Paycor and Finch: Advancing the Interoperability of the Employment Ecosystem

Paycor is a human capital management (HCM) platform that enables organizations to streamline their HR, payroll, timekeeping, and talent management processes. More than 30,000 businesses trust Paycor to simplify and automate their HR and payroll operations—saving them time, reducing administrative burdens, and ensuring compliance with employment regulations.

Paycor views its customers as its beating heart. In recent years, the company has observed a rise in customers wanting to sync their employment data across the systems they use. Without open connectivity with other applications, their customers wasted time on manual data entry or used risky methods for transferring sensitive information. By developing tight integrations with other tools, the company was confident it could reduce the burden on its customers and improve the user experience. 

The Paycor team realized they faced an uphill battle: Building 1:1 integrations with the more than 5,700 tools in the employment ecosystem would take decades, plus new players enter the scene on a daily basis, making it impossible to keep up. The company needed a partner like Finch that could quickly expand the number of integrated experiences it could offer its customers.

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“Paycor, like Finch, wants to give employers power over their own data. By helping Paycor integrate with other tools in their customers’ tech stacks, Finch helps make this vision a reality. We’re excited to add support for such a big player this year and work together to drive more integrated experiences for employers.” 

—Runae Lee, Head of Partnerships at Finch

Finch is a unified API that offers third-party software providers with programmatic access to 200+ HR and payroll systems via a single integration. Once employers give permission to software providers to access their employment data, Finch Connect performs syncs regularly to keep the data fresh. This serves a multitude of use cases, from automating benefits enrollment to forecasting operational expenditures.

“As the leader in employment data, Finch is an ideal partner. The integration of our platforms unlocks new value for Paycor customers, who can now securely sync their data with other systems within their tech stack. By working together, we’ve made our product stickier and paved the way for an even better customer experience.” 

—Paycor’s Partnership Team

Unlock Employment Data in Paycor With Finch’s Unified API 

To leverage your customers’ employment data from Paycor, and give them a deeply integrated product experience, sign up to get API keys today or reach out to our team with questions.

Finch and Personio are working together to power the next wave of innovation with real-time employment data. 

Together, we’re making it easier than ever for innovators to build incredible, integrated experiences.

Our goal is to unify the employment data ecosystem by providing access to hundreds of HR and payroll systems with a single, streamlined integration. One way we do that is through partnerships, which allow us to revolutionize how B2B innovators leverage the power of employment data to build next-generation solutions for employers.

Today, we’re excited to announce our new strategic partnership with Personio. 

Personio: all-in-one HR software

Personio is the people operating system that automates and simplifies HR tasks, from recruiting to offboarding, within a single solution. Personio alleviates employers’ administrative burdens, so they have time for more strategic work and can focus on what really matters: people.

To provide employers with the best possible experience and the widest breadth of choice when it comes to customizing their tech stack, Personio integrates with 150 business systems (and counting), including applicant tracking, time management, benefits, compensation, learning and development, and performance management solutions. In turn, Personio customers can quickly and seamlessly connect the apps they use every day to their Personio account, ensuring their Personio data syncs across systems and giving them back their valuable time. 

By partnering with Finch, Personio is taking its commitment to integrated experiences and employer choice to the next level by making it easier than ever for third-party developers to integrate with its API.

“Our new partnership with Finch promises to rapidly expand the number and range of third-party applications that function seamlessly with Personio, which will open up a world of integrative possibilities, particularly for our customers in Europe. In turn, we will be able to better serve our mission to streamline people workflow by further reducing the need for repetitive admin tasks across the employee journey.” 

Hugues Vincent, Head of Partnerships at Personio

What our partnership means for the future

Together, Finch and Personio aren’t just making people operations better and easier for Personio customers; we’re helping to address a much larger and far-reaching problem: the inaccessibility of business-critical employment data. The reality is, employment data is dispersed and siloed across thousands of payroll and HR systems, and that is impeding efficiency and software functionality across the business landscape.

Meanwhile, business users have grown accustomed to the seamless digital experiences they’ve experienced in consumer apps, and are growing to expect that the business applications they use are also  integrated from the start. The Finch-Personio partnership is an important step toward making that a reality for even more innovators.

“We’re thrilled to be working so closely with a developer friendly HR system like Personio that recognizes the importance of innovation and employer choice. Not only will our relationship give Personio customers more options, as we look to expand Finch’s international coverage, Personio will be an important partner in helping us (and, by extension, the developers who build with Finch) gain a better understanding of local markets and the nuances of building a global solution.”

Runae Lee, Head of Partnerships at Finch

How the integration works

Developers who build B2B applications with Finch can make it easy for their users to connect their Personio accounts in seconds. The process is easy: Users simply permission the Personio sync through Finch Connect, and our front-end UI that allows them to safely and securely grant data access through the use of an API token. Finch Connect can be displayed at any point in an application’s customer flow and handles credential validation, multi-factor authentication, and error handling for each system Finch supports.

Once a user has gone through the full authentication process, the application can sync real-time employment data within the user’s Personio account.

If you’re building a B2B application and want to leverage employment data to give your customers a deeply integrated product experience, sign up to get API keys today or reach out to our team with any questions.

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Finch and Codat are partnering to empower financial institutions to supply the funds SMBs need to weather economic challenges, starting with PPP loans.

What is the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)?

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) represented an unprecedented action by Congress to help SMBs that experienced major business disruption in the wake of the global pandemic. Over 5.2 million loans were approved by 5,460 lenders totaling $525B as of August 2020.

In January 2021 the second wave of PPP loans was made available totaling $284B in order to provide additional emergency financial support to SMBs.

There was a range of problems experienced by the first round of PPP loans. Lack of clarity on the correct forms that needed to be completed, large corporates being provided with loans whilst the small businesses were left hanging; and a complete lack of understanding into how forgiveness worked.

This time around businesses and lenders are better equipped to receive and offer funding through the program, but it’s still not an easy process.

So what is the process?

The number of steps and the depth of information required from various systems to facilitate a successful PPP loan can be overwhelming.

SMBs have to fulfill a range of eligibility requirements. They must dig up key business data, calculate estimated loan amounts using average payroll costs, and then go through a separate process to apply for forgiveness that includes cost summaries for qualified expenses.

Lenders have to conduct good-faith reviews for loan amounts, disburse funds quickly, and confirm the qualified expenses by asking for proof.

A partnership that streamlines PPP application all via a single API

While submitting an application, businesses are required to provide:

• Proof they have suffered a decrease in revenue
• A detailed breakdown of the business’s expenses along with the receipts attached to those expenses
• Granular employee-specific information as well as aggregate wage amount

This can take small business owners hours, if not days to produce manually.

Many of these data points can be made accessible through Finch and Codat’s platforms to help SMBs and lenders make the most out of this program, seamlessly & securely allowing these businesses to share their payroll and accounting data with lenders.

Using Finch, lenders can retrieve key payroll information directly from the business’s payroll system for specified periods, employee-level data to calculate the maximum loan eligibility and auto-populate key business data required in the PPP loan application.

Lenders can use Codat to obtain access to accounting data, including existing debt & expenses as well as revenue, to build a comprehensive view of the SMB’s financial situation. Codat also allows lenders to extract key evidence to support the expense claims (i.e. receipts).

Once the capital is disbursed, lenders servicing the loans can utilize the same ongoing connections to confirm how the funds were spent, using Finch to confirm payroll spend and Codat to verify other qualified business expenses. All without businesses having to re-authorize the connection to their financial software.

Using both platforms lenders can cut down application time and reduce errors that could arise from manual calculations.

Finch and Codat combined can help lenders make a faster impact on SMBs with access to PPP loans.

For more information on how Finch and Codat can help you please reach out to the Finch team at founders@tryfinch.com or Codat directly at info@codat.io.

In this joint blog post with vehicle API provider, Smartcar, learn how information retrieval with APIs help increase revenue, quality of services, and productivity for commercial auto insurance providers.

Over the past 10 years, commercial auto underwriters have cited more than $22 billion in underwriting losses. To achieve long-term profitability, a 2020 report calls on providers to strengthen their collective focus on pricing, underwriting, and claims handling.

The industry is already responding.

Companies are taking advantage of stronger data ecosystems to withstand post-pandemic insurance prices, restrictive policies, and anxious drivers. Auto insurance rates have increased 3% in the United States from 2020 to 2021—but the rise in emerging telematics-based solutions has saved policyholders 4% on their insurance.

APIs can help commercial auto insurance providers improve underwriting models and customer experiences, whether that’s by streamlining broker communication or automating the retrieval of policyholder information.

In this blog post, learn how APIs can contribute to your goals and why the opportunity cost of implementation has never been lower.

How APIs give the commercial auto insurance providers a competitive advantage

For the commercial auto insurance industry, the potential advantages of API integrations—particularly integrations with vehicle data systems and HR and payroll systems—bolster customer satisfaction, retention, and profit margins. Here’s how:

Improve underwriting processes with real-time, granular data visibility

API integrations help you stream data straight from the source, ensuring your underwriting model is informed by the most complete and up-to-date information available. For vehicle integrations, that includes commonly misreported data attributes like odometer readings, VINs, and garaging locations, while HR and payroll system integrations enable you to collect your customers’ employee census records in seconds.

Reduce operating costs with automated workflows

In the United States and Europe, companies spend an average of 5 hours each week on the duplication of responsibilities—time that you could otherwise spend delivering higher quality services and products. Without automation, you lose significant time sorting, extracting, and analyzing large sets of data on drivers, vehicles, and driving records.

An API helps your business speed up claims management by seamlessly communicating data across claimants, carriers, and brokers. By automating what data is retrieved from vehicles and when, businesses can avoid repetitive manual processes, hefty spreadsheets, and missing information. In short, your operational productivity increases as you reduce in-house costs for data management and quality assurance.

Increase revenue with a better user experience

Amidst shifting workplace expectations and added economic anxiety, employers are more confident working with insurance carriers that are responsive, accurate, and easy to use. That’s how APIs give you a competitive edge—by allowing quick access to customer data for efficient broker communication and higher-quality risk assessment processes. The stream of rich, real-time data APIs helps your business evolve beyond just insurance. The data visibility that APIs enable can position your app as a forward-thinking partner that guides customers to make better decisions. All of this starts with the standardization of data retrieval processes and the elimination of cumbersome CSV file uploads, reducing friction for all parties involved.

Remove the need for aftermarket hardware devices

Tracking devices on policyholders’ vehicles can provide useful information on their driving habits—but they are expensive, vulnerable to tampering, and prone to loss, damage, and labor-intensive installation.  In contrast, an API integration can communicate directly with the embedded cellular modems built into most new vehicles. They’re easy to set up, don’t require any hardware or installation, and reduce the risk of fraud.

APIs power more access to vehicle data

Enrollment for telematics-based insurance saw significant growth during the pandemic and is used by the most popular auto insurers today. Nearly half of drivers who were given a telematics option for car insurance in 2021 opted into the program.

Connected car API platforms like Smartcar communicate directly with 4G and 5G telematics modems that are built into vehicles. In a few steps, Smartcar’s API can retrieve vehicle data such as odometer readings, location, VIN, and vehicle attributes.

For usage-based insurance (UBI) analytics provider True Mileage, odometer readings are automatically retrieved by clients at regular intervals. “I was completely awestruck when I learned that Smarcar enables insurers to connect to over 112 million vehicles,” said Ryan Morrison, founder and CEO at True Mileage.

Here’s how that works:

1. Customers link their car to your app: Vehicle owners are brought through Smartcar’s authorization flow, Smartcar Connect. The customer logs in with their car brand’s connected services account. In 2021, 66% of U.S. drivers were using connected car services. Check out Smartcar’s guides on how drivers can set up a connected services account if they don’t have one already.
2. Customers consent to sharing their car information: Smartcar lets vehicle owners review exactly what information will be shared with your insurance app. Vehicles are linked only after the customer clicks “Allow” on the screen.
3. The app requests vehicle data: After the customer has linked their vehicle, your app can begin collecting the necessary data to offer the best claims management processes and quotes.

With a single integration across multiple vehicle brands, you can improve data aggregation and extraction, present better quotes to customers, and expand risk management efforts with predictive analytics and pattern recognition.

APIs make it easy to retrieve employee information

Vehicle integrations are just the beginning. For commercial auto insurance providers, retrieving employee information is just as critical. Fortunately, Finch’s API makes it easy and intuitive. In just a few clicks, your customers can grant you access to their HR or payroll system, enabling a direct data stream and all of the insights that come with it.

The process is simple:

• Finch Connect (a secure front-end modal) prompts your customers to choose their payroll or HR system.
• Your customers authorize a set of permissions by entering their admin or API credentials into that system.
• The connection is established.

From there, you can begin pulling the data you need to process a customer’s policy and enroll employees in coverage. Finch’s API endpoints offer remarkable depth, including:

• Company data like your customers’ legal business name, EIN, departmental phone numbers, primary bank account number, and official address
• Directory data, as in a full roster of your customers’ employees (historic and current), their first and last names, personal and work email addresses, date of birth, and home address
• Employment data like job title (historic and current), supervisor, employment status (active or contractor, full-time or part-time), start date, and salary

In effect, Finch turns what was once a 30-day process, marked by clumsy document uploads and (seemingly) endless email back-and-forth, into a 30-second one—complete with richer, reliably accurate data.

To build or to buy?

There are many components to launching a software-driven auto insurance product for customers. You might consider custom integrations with vehicles and employer software, but the cost of building and maintaining all of those connections can impede product development and go-to-market plans.

Of course, reaping the benefits of providers like Smartcar and Finch requires outsourcing your API integrations, as opposed to building them in-house.

You may be asking yourself “do we build or do we buy?” While it’s natural to assume you can take on the work yourself (you do have a team of engineers, after all), there are a number of considerations you should weigh before taking that leap:

Team bandwidth and priorities

How much faster would you execute your roadmap if your team’s attention wasn’t split between your product and integrations? Integrations come with a heavy price tag when you consider the hours your team would spend building and maintaining connections. In fact, one Finch customer estimates it saved up to $100,000 by opting not to build in-house.

It takes a dedicated team to consistently monitor and troubleshoot APIs while providing technical support for both customers and internal teams building new features around the integration infrastructure. Partnering with an API platform can save your technical team weeks of engineering work that could otherwise be spent on core projects for customer acquisition and growth.

Agility to scale

Building one integration in-house might seem doable, but a single integration will only cover a fraction of your customer base. Your APIs need to scale as your audience does, but instead of getting easier, integrations only become more complex as you add to them. Disparate data sources have different data models, and the lack of standardization would force your developers to sort through heaps of unformatted data that your product does not need. When not done correctly, it can end up requiring a lot of manual intervention to make right.

A pre-built API ecosystem gives you the agility to expand existing offerings without the cost of developing new systems from scratch or upending existing ones. When smart charging app, Optiwatt, expanded its product compatibility to five new vehicle brands, they used Smartcar to ensure in-house developers could focus on upcoming new features instead.

Data privacy and security

Although APIs have become a common solution for businesses, these integrations are still vulnerable to cybersecurity risks if the right measures aren’t taken. Companies building their own API connections will need to stay on top of compliance processes and certifications at all times to build user confidence and meet industry standards. If you’re integrating your solution with vehicles, you will need to build out authentication, permissions, and token management systems to securely transfer mobility data with an API token. This increases the complexities of your integration development, especially when multiple OEMs don’t have their own tokens process in place.

Compounding maintenance costs

As a matter of course, integrations eventually break or malfunction due to system updates on your end or changes to the format of your data sources. Monitoring and troubleshooting these changes is a full-time job that will rob your team of valuable time and energy they could be spending on your core product. By having a dedicated team of experts to monitor and troubleshoot API errors, your business reduces the risk of technical backlogs and inconsistencies.

Not only does this help you manage your maintenance costs, but it also increases the reliability of your product and boosts customer confidence. If you don’t have the in-house resources to maintain your integrations, working with an API partner keeps your systems in order even when your business is scaling and your product is evolving.

Partner up to power forward

Join the growing fleet of providers leveraging APIs to improve processes, automate workflows, and build better user experiences. Contact Smartcar's sales team and get API keys from Finch today!

We’re now an EHIR trusted partner!

Finch and EHIR are partnering to help innovative companies empower employers with health, wellness, and productivity solutions for their workforces. We’re excited to announce that we’ll be supporting their academy, innovator, and alumni communities with our employment data platform.

What is EHIR?

EHIR is a coalition of more than 75 of the world’s leading employers, including Apple, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Target, and Disney, that find and accelerate solutions to help employees attain their best health. The objective support and valuable insight EHIR provides helps member organizations navigate the shifting employer landscape and stay ahead of the curve.

Over the past six years, EHIR has worked diligently to identify and evaluate the most promising emerging health and wellness solutions in HR tech. Now, after undergoing a thorough vetting process, we’re proud to announce that EHIR has recognized Finch as a trusted partner in its exclusive network.

The important role of EHIR in today’s health benefits landscape

The pandemic has changed the way many people think about health and telehealth services. Meanwhile, the Great Resignation has afforded employees greater bargaining power, putting pressure on employers to provide more and increasingly progressive benefits.

Due to the growing demand for technology that addresses these challenges, many HR tech startups are entering the market. With so many products to choose from, it can be difficult for employers to understand which best suit the needs of their employees.

Why Finch was chosen and what it means

As an independent organization, EHIR provides employers with recommendations they can trust—saving them time and money.

By unifying data access to multiple HRIS and payroll systems through a single integration, Finch meets EHIR’s criteria as an innovative platform their community members can rely on to help them tackle data syncing challenges. We’re honored by the distinction and excited for the opportunity to support EHIR’s change-making mission.

Join the growing fleet of providers leveraging APIs to improve processes, automate workflows, and build better user experiences. Contact EHIR's team and get API keys from Finch today!

At Finch, we believe in a connected future where employers can seamlessly synchronize their data across applications and providers can enable the next wave of HR and fintech innovation.

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re one step closer to achieving that goal through our strategic partnership with BambooHR.

BambooHR: One-stop shopping for employers

BambooHR helps employers enter, track, view, and manage HR and business data in one centralized system, freeing employers to focus on what matters most to a growing organization – people.

We're dedicated to partnering with top rated solutions that save our customers time, streamline their management process, and set them free to do great work. We love that Finch helps us delight customers by allowing their data to sync quickly and effortlessly across applications.

Natalie Bigney, Marketplace Manager at BambooHR

What our partnership means for the future

The collaboration between Finch and BambooHR exemplifies our shared commitment to empowering innovators. Together, we’re working together to ensure employers can share employment data securely with third-party applications—and changing the status quo in the process.

At issue is the stifling lack of data connectivity that has long held back the employment data ecosystem. Without reliable programmatic integrations, employers have had to rely on highly manual processes like flat-file sharing to access their own data. Despite the challenges and cost of manual work, employers invest thousands of hours to pull this data and drive important business processes, from headcount planning to expense management and practically everything in between.

Finch first took on the challenge of solving this issue when we built a universal API to integrate with HR information systems and payroll providers. We now provide mission-critical infrastructure for applications across B2B fintech, benefits, HR, and enterprise verticals.

Customers are growing to expect that their applications will work together out of the box. BambooHR is partnering with Finch to support employer choice and ensure broad compatibility with leading and emerging technologies in this space. In short, Finch and BambooHR are working to ensure interoperability between platforms to enable innovation and exceptional efficiencies fueled by employment data.

How the integration works

Our partnership makes accessing the employee data in BambooHR a seamless process. Employer administrators simply permission the data sync through Finch Connect by way of BambooHR’s OpenID Connect flow—a streamlined, reliable method of authorization that builds on the OAuth framework.

To log in, admins enter their BambooHR subdomain into Finch Connect, which will redirect them to BambooHR, where they can then authenticate using either single sign-on or their BambooHR account credentials. Once complete, the authorized third-party provider has immediate, streaming access to the real-time, organization-wide employee census data stored and managed by BambooHR.

It’s that simple.

By partnering with BambooHR, we’re solidifying our commitment to build a more connected ecosystem centered around employer choice. Not all SMBs are alike and BambooHR understands this. Through this integration, we’re enabling tens of thousands of employers to connect with the third-party applications they trust to help them run their organizations.

Ansel Parikh, co-founder of Finch

Want to see our partnership in action? Sign up to get your free sandbox API keys here and check out our listing on the BambooHR Marketplace.

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Since our inception, Finch has been committed to building the infrastructure to enable tech innovators to leverage employment data and build next-generation solutions for employers. Accomplishing this at scale means collaborating with like-minded disruptors. That’s why we’re excited to announce our latest strategic partnership with HiBob.

HiBob: Streamlining core HR functionality for modern businesses

HiBob is on a mission to transform how organizations operate in the modern world of work with its HR platform ‘Bob’.  Leading the way for the future workplace, Bob offers resilient, agile technology that wraps all the complexities of HR processes into a game changing, user-friendly tool that touches every employee across the business.

HiBob innovates through continuous learning loops to produce seismic cultural shifts for companies with dynamic, distributed workforces. From out-of-the-box onboarding, workflows, performance and compensation management to people analytics and more—Bob gives teams everything they need to operate efficiently. But that’s not all. Bob also provides essential engagement features that drive communication, inclusion, and belonging—inspiring a remarkable experience for every employee.

We’re very excited to partner with Finch and drive data accessibility for the high-growth companies that are using HiBob. Today’s digital workplaces require integrated applications. When systems combine, they make it easier for employees to collaborate, share information, and get great work done. The right tech can really make or break a global culture from both a business and a people perspective. We’re thrilled to offer our customers a seamless connection to the HR tech applications of their choice through the Finch integration.

Breanne Murphy, Global Head of Partner Marketing at HiBob

What our partnership means for the future

The employment data ecosystem is incredibly fragmented – the average small business has 18 different applications that may or may not work together in a seamless fashion. To perform at the speed of modern business and create the best employee experiences possible, employers need leading-edge technology that addresses their unique pain points. That means being able to push and pull data between individual systems to automate inefficient manual processes like onboarding, PTO approval, and setting IT permissions. But for organizations trying to scale internationally, this requires investing in multiple, siloed HR applications or an all-in-one platform that may be missing functionality or exclude leading applications in a product category.

As one of the top HRIS platforms in Europe and North America, HiBob recognizes the importance of connectivity when it comes to employment data for both customers and third-party developers. HiBob’s modern HR platform provides a flexible infrastructure that allows organizations to build seamless employee experiences around their biggest pain points. By leveraging Finch’s universal API, HiBob can extend that flexibility to developers around the world.

Through the partnership, Finch and HiBob will be able to better support developers and employers while disrupting the HR tech space. By enabling secure access to employment data on behalf of employers, we’re ensuring interoperability between B2B solutions—opening the door to greater innovation, fueling the growth of the HiBob integration marketplace, and building a future-ready workforce.

How the integration works

On a technical level, our integration allows employers to securely share their HiBob data with their favorite third-party applications. Employer admins authenticate directly through Finch Connect to generate a long-lasting API token that queries the HiBob API while keeping the admin within Finch’s front-end modal. Alternatively, employer admins using SSO will be walked through a quick set of instructions that lets them directly generate the API token from within the HiBob dashboard. This will then be shared with Finch, completing the authentication process.

Once the employer admin has been fully authenticated, they’ll automatically connect real-time, org-wide employment data from HiBob with the desired third-party application and begin supporting robust, integrated HR experiences—putting HiBob customers at the forefront of a growing market.

The companies that use HiBob today are typically tech-forward and highly efficient operations. They don’t have time to spend on manual processes. They want and expect integrated experiences, in addition to flexibility in how those experiences are built and maintained across apps. HiBob and Finch are enabling employer choice and supporting developers and HiBob customers by powering the automated solutions they are looking for.

Runae Lee, Head of Partnerships at Finch

Support your customers using HiBob and sign up to get your free sandbox API keys today.