Quote a Group

Quote a group for coverage for a product line and market

A quote can be created for a group through the "Create a Quote" endpoint (API docs). In the latest endpoint version, v8, quotes are processed asynchronously. A successful request to this endpoint indicates that a quote is created and processing; the status can be polled to check for completion of rating processes for all eligible carriers. Both polling and the delivery of premiums are covered in the subsequent Retrieve Rates section.

Configuring Requests

A quote is created in reference to a group. The parameters required to create a quote are specific to that quote and the group at the time of quote creation. Notes on important fields for group medical quoting are included below.

• Effective Date effective_date - the effective date of coverage to be quote for the group. Rates for small group medical plans are filed on a quarterly basis; premiums will (barring re-filings) be consistent within a quarter, but vary quarter to quarter.

• Rating Method rating_method - the rating method selected here does not impact the availability of various rating methods in the display rates response. All available rating methodologies - typically one or more of age banded, 4-tier composite, and adult-child tier for medical - will be included regardless of the rating_method parameter. The rating_method only impacts which rating methodology will be used for the plan-level total_premium. Given this, the parameter can be defaulted to age_banded for most use cases.

• Contribution Percentage contribution_percentage - the estimated employer contribution to the payment of plan premiums. For most medical quoting use cases, this can be defaulted to 100, as the contribution will not impact the quoted premium. Contribution applies in rare scenarios where there are minimum employer contribution requirements, such as the state of California.

• Participation Percentage participation_percentage - the estimated group participation for enrollment in the plan. For most medical quoting use cases, this can be defaulted to 100, as the participation will not impact the quoted premium. Participation applies in rare scenarios where there are minimum participation requirements, such as with the CalChoice exchange.

• Voluntary voluntary - the voluntary flag does not have any impact on medical quoting premiums nor eligibility. This can be defaulted to either true or false.

• Include Complete Age Bands include_complete_age_bands - toggles whether or not the full 0-65 age banded premiums will be included in the display rates response for this quote. If set to true, the complete_age_bands object will be rendered when using v8 of the "Display Rates" endpoint. The complete age bands are returned for all plans in a quote, when applicable. Only Medical quoting is supported for this parameter. The default value for this parameter is false.

• Broker NPN npn - the NPN identifier for the agent or agency representing the group being quoted.

A sample request with fields required for small group medical quoting, for reference:

POST /groups/<group.id>/quotes

{
  "quote": {
    "effective_date": "2026-01-01",
    "product_line": "medical",
    "market": "small_group",
    "contribution_percentage": 100,
    "participation_percentage": 100,
    "rating_method": "age_banded",
    "npn": "<Valid Broker NPN>",
    "voluntary": false
  }
}

Additional Information

Quote ID

Successful requests to the "Create a Quote" endpoint will return an id for the quote. This internal identifier needs to be referenced in subsequent endpoints to retrieve rates and plan eligibility and quote errors.

The quote.id should be easily accessible for triage workflows; it is required for support requests related to group quoting, along with the group ID (found in the Create a Group section).

Filtering Carriers and Plans

By default, Ideon quotes all available carriers and plans for a group. There are two optional parameters available for filtering the carriers and plans to be quoted, carrier_ids and include_member_limited_plans.

Carrier IDs

The carrier_ids array limits quoting to the issuers or carriers specified in the array. The identifiers that can be used for this filter are available in the Carrier and Issuer Data for plans, which is included in the schema for medical plans that is returned in the Cache Benefits step.

Include Member Limited Plans

The include_member_limited_plans parameter defaults to false and filters plans out of the quote if they would not be available to every member in the group. If set to true, these member-limited plans are included. Plans that are member-limited are rare; they are primarily found in California and with Select Health (Midwest) plans that require members to live in-state or have other similar location criteria.

The Retrieve Rates section contains details on how to identify member-limited plans that were quoted when this is set to true. The Plan Eligibility and Quote Errors section contains details on how to identify plan eligibility errors for quotes where this is set to false.

Carrier Quoting API Integrations

Ideon supports two parallel rating methodologies for quoting: an internal rating engine and integrations to carrier quoting APIs to source rates in real-time. These are used when applicable to process quotes. The vast majority of Small Group medical carriers are quoted through Ideon's internal rating engine. The exception is UnitedHealthcare "B2B" plans, which are quoted through a direct, real-time integration to UHC's quoting API. For more information on approval for UHC's API, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

Retry Until Parameter

Carrier quoting APIs can introduce additional latency and errors independent of Ideon's API. The retry_until parameter can be used to configure the length of time Ideon will retry quotes through the carrier's API before completing the quote with an error for the carrier and/or plans that were not able to be rated.

The retry_until parameter configures the time in seconds for which Ideon will automatically retry any failed quotes that are routed through carrier APIs. The default is 15 seconds and accepted values are integers between 0 and 90. Note that this only affects retries for failed carrier quotes; a value of 0 means that Ideon will attempt to quote through the carrier API once, regardless of success or failure.