Open Insurance and FIDA: What Really Changes for Italian Insurance Brokers and Agents (and How to Prepare Today)
The European FIDA regulation extends the logic of open banking to the insurance world, requiring intermediaries and companies to share client data with authorised third parties. Here is what it means operationally for Italian brokers and agents, and why moving now can turn a regulatory obligation into a competitive advantage.
A change that is no longer hypothetical
For years the FIDA regulation (Financial Data Access) was talked about as a distant prospect, a regulatory framework that "sooner or later" would touch the insurance sector. That "sooner or later" has suddenly become far more concrete. In April 2025 the first trilogue was held between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, and the conclusion of negotiations is expected by autumn 2025, with a first implementation phase planned for 2027.
For Italian brokers and agents, this means one simple thing: the time to prepare is not unlimited. Yet, according to the EY study "Open Insurance in evolution: the value of FiDA" published in June 2025, only 17% of Italian insurance companies have launched structured projects in line with the regulation, while 83% of operators report a "partial or limited" understanding of the topic. If this is the level of preparedness among the companies, it is reasonable to expect awareness among intermediaries — brokers, agents, sub-agents — to be even lower.
This article is not meant to be alarmist. FIDA is not a regulatory apocalypse, but a structural change that redefines who controls insurance data and how that data can be used to generate value. Those who understand which way the wind is blowing today can rig the boat. Those who wait will find themselves playing catch-up.
What FIDA is and why it directly concerns intermediaries
FIDA is the European regulation that extends to the broader financial world — insurance included — the logic that PSD2 introduced for payment accounts. If open banking allowed fintechs and aggregators to access current-account data with the client's consent, open finance does the same for a much wider perimeter: mortgages, investments, pensions, loans and — the crucial point for our sector — non-life insurance.
The underlying principle is the centrality of the client. It is the client, not the intermediary, who decides with whom to share their data and for what purpose. The parties holding the data (the so-called data holders: companies, brokers, agents) will have to make it available through standardised interfaces (APIs) to authorised third parties, the data users. The latter, if they are not already regulated financial institutions, will have to obtain a specific authorisation as a Financial Information Service Provider (FISP) from the competent authority of their member state.
In the Italian context this intertwines with the supervisory role of IVASS and with a fabric of intermediaries historically less digitised than in other European countries. The European Commission estimates that the open finance framework could generate up to 10 billion euros in direct benefits by 2030, against roughly 2.4 billion in one-off costs to build the API infrastructure and around 470 million in annual maintenance costs. These are figures that describe an infrastructural transformation, not a mere regulatory update.
What concretely changes for a broker or an agent
Picture your operations two or three years from now. A client asks you to review their motor liability cover. Today, to do it well, you have to ask them to dig out previous policies, no-claims certificates, any claims, documentation of other cover. It is a slow, often incomplete process that depends on the client's memory and patience.
With FIDA operational, that same client will be able to authorise — with one click — the sharing of their insurance data by all the other operators that hold it. Your system will receive it via API in structured form, ready to be analysed. It is an enormous simplification. But there is the other side of the coin: your competitors will be able to do the same thing with your clients' data, if the client authorises them to.
This radically changes the market's competitive rules. Until now, the informational asset an intermediary builds over time — historical knowledge of the client, contractual details, past claims history — represented a natural barrier to entry for competitors. FIDA tears down that barrier. Data becomes portable, and client loyalty will no longer be able to rely on the friction of having to "explain everything from scratch" to a new operator.
At the same time, unprecedented scenarios open up. According to the EY study, 75% of insurance companies believe FIDA could bring potentially threatening non-traditional players onto the market, with big tech mentioned in 67% of responses. It should be noted that the European Parliament, in defining its negotiating mandate, indicated that the large gatekeepers designated by the Digital Markets Act should not be eligible as FISPs, precisely to avoid leverage effects between adjacent markets and finance. But this does not rule out fintechs, insurtechs and specialised aggregators, which will have every opportunity to position themselves as a new generation of intermediaries.
The corporate areas most affected by the regulation will be, again according to the EY study, IT and information systems (75% of responses), the Legal, Risk & Compliance functions (75%) and cybersecurity (42%). For a medium-sized broker, this translates into three very concrete questions: are my management systems ready to expose data via API? Do I have structured data governance? Do I know who touches what, when and why, in my internal processes?
The operational approach: three levers to work on today
The most concrete risk, for an Italian intermediary, is not being sanctioned by IVASS for failing to comply in time. It is arriving at 2027 with a data infrastructure incapable of competing with those who, in the meantime, will have turned open insurance into an operational advantage. There are three levers it is worth starting to work on now.
The first is rationalising the informational asset. Many Italian brokers and agents manage client data in a fragmented way: part in the official management system, part in Excel spreadsheets, part in emails, part in the memories of senior staff. This fragmentation, already a problem today, will become untenable when data has to be exposed in a structured and verifiable way via API. The first step is to take a realistic census: where is my data? Who manages it? In what format? At what level of quality? Without this mapping, any compliance project starts in the dark.
The second is data quality. FIDA will require not only sharing data, but sharing it in standardised formats and with a minimum level of consistency. If your management system today contains policies with fields filled in inconsistently, duplicate clients, documents disconnected from customer records, these problems will become visible — and quantifiable — the moment the data has to leave the corporate perimeter. The good news is that improving data quality brings immediate benefits even before the regulation comes into force: fewer operational errors, smoother renewals, less time lost on manual checks.
The third is the interoperability of systems. Many Italian insurance management systems were designed when the very concept of an API was marginal in the sector. Today the question to ask is not "is my management software good?", but "is my management software able to talk to other systems in a structured way?". If the answer is no, FIDA will not be the only problem: any significant digitisation project — from an advanced CRM to integration with insurer portals, from automating renewal-collection processes to client reporting — will hit the same obstacles.
Turning the obligation into positioning
There is a substantial difference between complying with FIDA and using FIDA as a strategic lever. Compliance is a defensive exercise: updating infrastructure to avoid problems. Positioning is an offensive exercise: understanding how the opening up of financial data can become an opportunity to differentiate.
A broker who arrives at 2027 with clean data, interoperable systems and documented processes does not merely become "compliant". They become a credible counterpart for those clients — ever more numerous — who want digital, transparent management of their insurance portfolio. They become a natural partner for companies and insurtechs looking for distributors able to integrate technically. And they become, above all, an operator able to use the data received from competing data holders to build analyses, recommendations and proposals that were previously materially impossible.
Conversely, those who show up in 2027 without these foundations will find themselves in an awkward position: forced to invest in a hurry to make up ground, at a time when the market will already be moving and compliance costs will be at their highest. The best window to prepare is the one in which no one is running yet. That window is precisely today.
A note of realism should be added: FIDA will not eliminate the value of human advice. On the contrary, by freeing intermediaries from low-value-added activities linked to the manual collection and verification of data, it can give back space to what really makes the difference — needs analysis, building tailored solutions, managing critical moments such as a claim. But only if the infrastructure behind is ready to support that shift.
How A126 supports intermediaries in preparing for FIDA
The issue, then, is not "whether" to prepare, but "how". And the how requires skills that are rarely in-house at a medium-sized broker or agency: process mapping, data quality analysis, designing interoperable architectures, integrating existing management systems with new API interfaces.
A126 Corporate Advisors works alongside brokers, agents and insurance intermediaries in building custom software and data infrastructures designed for the long term. We work with modern technologies — PHP, Tailwind, vanilla JavaScript, custom proprietary development — that make it possible to build tools tailored to the specific operational needs of each intermediary, without forcing the organisation into the logic of standardised software. Our approach always starts from analysing the real processes and takes shape in scalable solutions, ready to evolve as the regulatory framework consolidates.
If you are thinking about how to prepare your organisation for the arrival of FIDA, or if you simply want to understand where to start putting your data in order, get in touch for a free consultation. Together we will analyse the current state of your infrastructure and identify the concrete priorities to work on over the coming months.
The FIDA regulation is not a threat to those who do their job well as an intermediary. It is an accelerator, one that will reward those who have built the right foundations. The time to start is now, while the competitive advantage is still there to be won.
A126 Corporate Advisors — Custom software and strategic consulting for insurance intermediaries ready for the future.
