Engineering servicesFor agencies, MGAs & insurtech teams · US

IVANS integration,
without learning AL3 the hard way.

IVANS moves policy, commission, and claims data between carriers and 30,000+ agencies, as AL3 files that look like they were designed in 1983, because they were.

Working with
Trucker Path InsuranceLuckyTruckIIGHilson MoranNomod

Client relationships include work through Alfabolt, NativeBase's parent company.

Scoping call20 minutes

Bring us the integration. We’ll scope it on the call.

Twenty minutes, no deck. You leave with a written map, and we say on the call if it is a dead end.

14-day pilot, $2,499: live or you don’t pay · then $2,499 / mo

Not ready to talk? Start with the free tools instead →

We build the ingestion, parsing, and sync pipelines on top: engineers who have already shipped against IVANS Download, so you skip the six months of decoding group records.

Julie Zimmer, CEO at LuckyTruck
Adam Smith, VP of Product at Trucker Path Insurance
Paul, client
“It is like having an in-house fractional head of engineering and a fully functional dedicated team.”
Adam Smith · Truckerpath Insurance · read more →
Before you scope anything

What IVANS actually is, and isn’t.

Most teams come to us thinking IVANS is an API. It’s closer to an industry mailbox: carriers drop batch files, your side picks them up and makes sense of them. Knowing what flows through it (and what never will) is the difference between a two-week build and a dead end.

What it gives you
  • Daily policy downloads from carriers (declarations, endorsements, cancellations, reinstatements) delivered as AL3 batch files to your IVANS mailbox.
  • Commission statements in machine-readable form, which makes automated commission reconciliation actually possible.
  • Direct-bill and (carrier-permitting) claims activity, so your AMS or data warehouse reflects what the carrier already knows.
  • eDocs & Messages for declarations and policy documents alongside the structured data.
  • A single connection pattern that scales: once your AL3 pipeline is solid, adding the next carrier is configuration, not a new project.
Where it bites
  • AL3 is a fixed-format, group-based standard with real per-carrier variance: two carriers can encode the same endorsement differently, and your parser has to absorb that.
  • It is batch, not real-time. Downloads land on carrier schedules; if you need live quoting or status, that’s carrier APIs or portal automation, not IVANS.
  • Mailbox setup and carrier authorizations take calendar time: each carrier connection needs to be requested and approved, and not every carrier sends every transaction type.
  • Coverage is uneven: policy download is broad, claims download is much rarer, and some carriers send documents but thin structured data.
  • Silent failure is the default: a carrier quietly stops sending and nothing errors. Without monitoring, you find out at renewal time.
What we build

Shipped before, shipped again.

These are the engagements we run most often on this platform. If yours isn’t here, bring it to the scoping call. If we can’t build it, we’ll say so on the call.

AL3 → clean JSON parsing layer

A parser that turns raw AL3 group records into a normalized, documented JSON model (policies, transactions, coverages, premiums) with per-carrier quirk handling isolated so one carrier’s weirdness never breaks another’s feed.

Scope this build

Download ingestion pipelines

Scheduled pickup from your IVANS mailbox into wherever the data needs to live: your AMS, your CRM, a Postgres warehouse, or all three. Idempotent, replayable, and logged, so you can answer “did we get Tuesday’s file?” in one query.

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Renewal radar from download data

Policy expiration and renewal-status extraction across every carrier feeding your mailbox, surfaced as a daily list your producers actually work, instead of finding out about renewals when the insured calls.

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Commission reconciliation

Carrier commission statements parsed and matched against your AMS production data, with exceptions flagged. The monthly spreadsheet ritual becomes a report that lands in Slack.

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MGA distribution feeds

For MGAs and program admins: structured policy data flowing out to your retail agents’ systems through IVANS, so your producers stop emailing dec pages and your agents stop rekeying them.

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Monitoring & missed-download alerts

Health checks on every carrier connection: file counts, transaction mix, gaps against expected schedules. When a feed goes quiet, you get the alert the same day, not at month-end close.

Scope this build

Looking for the product instead of the engineering? We run ready-made automation on top of every major AMS: see the AMS integrations. Or, if you’d rather add a person than a project, hire an insurtech engineer who already knows this platform.

IVANS ingestion is usually the first half of a bigger build: the parsed AL3 has to land somewhere useful, a renewal desk, a commission reconciler, a book dashboard. When the destination does not exist yet, that second half is custom insurance software development: the tool designed around the download data, owned by you.

How it works

Scoped on a call.
Demoed the same week.

01
Day 0 · 20 min

Scoping call. You leave with a map.

Bring the integration you wish existed. We tell you what the platform genuinely allows on the call, and within 48 hours you have a written automation map: what we’d build first, what it saves, and what it costs.

02
Within 24 hours

A build lead joins your Slack.

A named engineer who has shipped against this platform before: not a recruiter, not a PM. They confirm access and credentials, then start on the thinnest end-to-end slice.

03
By day 14

The pilot is live, or you don’t pay.

Not a slide. The first integration running against your live environment: your policies, your clients, your edge cases, used by your team. If it isn’t live and used by day 14, the $2,499 pilot isn’t billed.

04
Month to month

It keeps running. We keep watching.

APIs version, portals change, schemas drift. The $2,499 a month retainer only starts once the pilot works: monitoring and fixes are in the flat fee, plus one new automation a month, and most clients learn something broke from our Slack message that says it’s already fixed.

What clients actually say

Engineers who already speak insurance.

“It is like having an in-house fractional head of engineering and a fully functional dedicated team.”

Adam Smith
VP of Product · Truckerpath Insurance
50% saved

“Alfabolt took over our digital platform and internal systems, improved functionality fast, and cut hosting and infrastructure costs by 50%.”

After just a few months, they were a fully integrated part of our team.

Julie Zimmer
CEO · Luckytruck
FAQ

The questions every scoping call starts with.

Do you handle IVANS setup, or do we need an existing connection?

Both work. If you already have an IVANS mailbox, we build on it. If you don’t, we walk you through account setup and carrier authorization requests. The paperwork is yours to sign, but we know which boxes matter and we sequence it so engineering never waits on a connection we could have requested in week one.

Can you really parse AL3? Our last vendor gave up.

Yes, and we’ll show you on your own files in the first week, not claim it on a call. AL3’s group structure is genuinely awkward and carriers deviate from the spec, which is why generic ETL tools choke on it. We’ve shipped AL3 parsing in production; per-carrier quirks get isolated into mapping rules so the core parser stays stable.

Is IVANS data enough, or do we still need portal automation?

Depends on the workflow. IVANS is the right backbone for policy, commission, and document data flowing carrier-to-agency on a schedule. For real-time tasks (quoting, submissions, status checks mid-day) you need carrier APIs or portal automation on top. We build both, and we’ll tell you on the scoping call which workflow belongs on which rail.

Can you feed IVANS data into our AMS, or only into a database?

Either. Many clients want a warehouse (Postgres, BigQuery, Snowflake) for reporting and a sync into the AMS or CRM for daily work. If your AMS already consumes IVANS downloads natively, we focus on what it drops: the data your AMS ignores is often exactly what your renewal and commission workflows need.

How long until something is live?

First demo on your real files inside the first week, typically the parser running against your actual mailbox contents. A production pipeline with monitoring usually lands within the first month, with carrier authorizations being the main calendar variable, not engineering.

What does it cost?

It starts free: a 20-minute call and a written automation map of the 3 to 5 workflows worth automating first. Then a 14-day pilot for $2,499 one time: one workflow, fixed scope, live and used by your team by day 14, or you don’t pay. After that, $2,499 a month keeps it running (monitoring and fixes included) and adds one new automation each month; $4,499 a month runs two build lanes. Month to month, cancel anytime, no setup fees. No per-carrier fees, no per-file fees, and we don’t charge extra for keeping the thing alive.

More about the engagement model, covering pricing, IP ownership, and how the team plugs into yours, on the hire insurtech engineers page, or compare all insurance engineering and integration services.

The next 20 minutes

Bring the integration
nobody wants to staff.

Twenty minutes, no deck. Tell us what should be flowing between your systems and isn’t. We’ll tell you if it’s buildable, how long it takes, and what it costs. The first piece is live in 14 days or you don’t pay. If we’re not the right team, we’ll say so and point you somewhere better.

Book a scoping call →● Limited pilot slots each month: one build lead per pilot