Who brings the market data while you sleep

Building APIs That Feed Excel Sheets Market Data

By

Puneet Shrivas

Jun 20, 2025

Jun 20, 2025

Jun 20, 2025

After we solved the Excel monster problem, something interesting happened. The underwriting leads started asking, "This is great for analyzing data we already have, what about getting fresh market intelligence into our sheets?"

Turns out, they were spending 3-4 hours every day manually researching cedants. Hunting down news articles, checking for litigation updates, trying to understand market sentiment. Copy-pasting snippets into their research templates. It was manual, time-consuming, and honestly pretty mind-numbing work.

So we built what I call the "News Intelligence APIs" - four endpoints that automatically feed contextual market data directly into their existing Excel workflows.

The Manual Research Pain

Picture this: It's Monday morning, you've got 15 cedants to research for renewal season. For each one, you're:

  • Googling company name + "news" + "litigation" + "SEC filings"

  • Scrolling through pages of results

  • Reading articles to figure out if they're actually relevant

  • Copy-pasting key information into Excel templates

  • Trying to remember what you found last week vs. what's new

By Friday, you've burned through 20 hours of research time and you're not even sure you caught the important stuff.

The real problem: Market information changes daily, but underwriters were researching weekly or monthly. Miss a major litigation announcement or earnings surprise, and you're making decisions with stale data.

Building APIs That Actually Help Underwriters

We designed four core endpoints that handle different aspects of market intelligence. The key insight: don't just return raw data, return decision-ready intelligence in formats underwriters already use.

/news - Smart News Aggregation

GET /news?ticker=AAPL&start_date=2024-01-01&end_date=2024-03-31
         &topic=litigation&language=en&score_threshold=0.7
         &limit=20&instructions="focus on underwriting implications"

RETURNS:
{
  "articles": [
    {
      "date": "2024-03-15",
      "headline": "Apple Faces Class Action Over Privacy Claims",
      "relevance_score": 0.85,
      "underwriting_impact": "High - D&O exposure",
      "source": "Reuters"
    }
  ]

What makes it smart:

  • Relevance scoring based on underwriting criteria

  • Automatic impact assessment

  • Overall summary connecting dots between stories

  • Language and topic filtering for global cedants

/summarize - Multi-Perspective Analysis

GET /summarize?ticker=TSLA&perspectives=shareholder,market_sentiment,analyst_ratings
           &date_range=30_days&instructions="focus on operational risks"

RETURNS:
{
  "shareholder_view": "Concerns about production targets, excited about AI developments",
  "market_sentiment": "Mixed - positive on innovation, negative on execution",
  "analyst_ratings": "12 upgrades, 8 downgrades, avg target $180",
  "risk_factors": ["Supply chain dependencies", "Regulatory scrutiny"]

The insight: The same news looks different to different stakeholders. Underwriters need to understand how shareholders, analysts, and markets interpret events differently.

/litigations - Legal Risk Tracking

GET /litigations?company=Microsoft&severity=high&date_range=90_days
              &impact_areas=IP,employment,regulatory

RETURNS:
{
  "active_cases": [
    {
      "case_title": "Microsoft Corp. v. Competitor XYZ",
      "court": "Eastern District of Texas",
      "case_type": "Patent Infringement",
      "potential_impact": {
        "financial": "$2.5B - $5B range",
        "operational": "Medium - product development delays",
        "reputational": "Low"
      }
    }
  ]

Why this matters: Legal risks directly impact D&O, E&O, and cyber coverage decisions. But legal documents are complex and implications aren't always obvious.

/filings - SEC Document Intelligence

GET /filings?company=JPMorgan&filing_types=10-K,10-Q,8-K
          &sections=risk_factors,legal_proceedings&date_range=180_days

RETURNS:
{
  "key_changes": [
    {
      "section": "Risk Factors",
      "change_type": "New risk added",
      "description": "Increased cyber security disclosure",
      "underwriting_relevance": "High - cyber coverage implications"
    }
  ],
  "regulatory_updates": ["New Basel III requirements", "CCAR stress test results"]

The magic: A 200-page 10-K becomes a focused summary of what changed and why underwriters should care.

Integration Magic: Feeding Excel Sheets

Here's where it gets interesting. We didn't build a new dashboard that nobody would use. We integrated directly into their existing Excel workflows.

Automated Sheet Population

Smart Refresh Scheduling

Template Customization

Different underwriters need different perspectives:

The Surprising Usage Pattern

Here's what really surprised us: these APIs became our most-hit backend endpoints. We're talking more API calls than our internal chatbot, more than our fancy dashboard interfaces, more than anything else we built.

Why? Turns out underwriters found it incredibly easy to interact with AI through their familiar Excel format. No new interfaces to learn, no chatbot conversations to manage, just enhanced versions of the spreadsheets they already lived in.

The adoption was almost instant. Within weeks, we saw thousands of API calls per day as underwriters integrated these feeds into their daily workflows. They weren't "using AI tools" - they were just doing their regular Excel work, but with superpowers.

What Actually Worked

  1. Start with existing workflows
    Enhancement beats replacement every time.

  2. Multiple perspectives matter
    Same event impacts different coverage lines differently.

  3. Automation with human oversight
    AI finds and summarizes, humans decide and act.

  4. Gradual complexity
    Started with simple news feeds, evolved to complex analysis.

The feedback: "It's like having a research analyst who never sleeps and never misses anything."

Want to See Your Excel Sheets Get Smarter?

The magic happens when market intelligence flows automatically into your existing workflows. No new dashboards to check, no separate research tools to remember.

We've set up demos with sample underwriting templates that show how these APIs transform manual research into automated intelligence gathering. You can see how a basic cedant research sheet becomes a dynamic, always-updated intelligence report.

Ready to stop hunting for news and start getting intelligence delivered? Let's walk through how these APIs could enhance your specific research workflows and Excel templates.

See the APIs in action with your research templates →