Simplify Insurance Order Sales with Micro‑Frontends: Reduce Complexity

Micro‑Frontend Overview

The micro‑frontend concept, introduced by ThoughtWorks in 2016, extends microservice ideas to front‑end development, addressing the complexity and bloat of monolithic front‑ends after middle‑platform micro‑service adoption. Micro‑frontends are independently deployable, autonomous page fragments, each responsible for specific UI elements and functions, enabling front‑end decoupling and reuse ("develop once, reuse across multiple ends").

From Monolithic Front‑End to Micro‑Frontend

Traditional projects use a single team to build a monolithic web application that calls back‑end services via an API gateway. Over time, the front‑end becomes bulky and hard to maintain. With the rise of 5G and mobile usage, enterprises aim to consolidate many apps into a single app, but this creates a flood of unfamiliar APIs for front‑end developers, leading to integration challenges.

To support multiple channels (internal, external, ecosystem), traditional enterprises need both shared middle‑platform services and dedicated middle‑platforms for core business, ensuring reuse across channels.

Combination Forms of Micro‑Frontend and Micro‑Service

Micro‑frontends can be combined with micro‑services in several ways:

Single‑type micro‑frontend: One micro‑frontend paired with one middle‑platform micro‑service forms a business unit, handling front‑end operations while the micro‑service handles back‑end logic.

Composite micro‑frontend: One micro‑frontend integrates multiple middle‑platform micro‑services, orchestrating them to implement more complex business processes. Careful boundary definition is required to avoid coupling.

Shared‑common micro‑frontend: One micro‑frontend works with one or more shared middle‑platform services, enabling reuse across multiple front‑ends.

Insurance Order Sales Scheme Based on Micro‑Frontend

Necessity of Insurance Order Sales Model

Insurance groups need unified, cross‑product sales to fully utilize resources. Traditional core systems are siloed by product line, leading to fragmented front‑ends and poor user experience when purchasing multiple products. Introducing an order entity, similar to e‑commerce, enables a unified sales interface covering all products, improving consistency and enabling event‑driven, asynchronous back‑end processing.

Construction of Underwriting Business Middle‑Platform

Each product line can have a dedicated underwriting middle‑platform containing at least two micro‑services: underwriting and policy‑management. The underwriting service stores application data and interacts with the underwriting center; after payment, it triggers policy creation. The policy‑management service receives policy data and handles commissions, reinsurance, and unified customer views. Corresponding micro‑frontends handle data entry, policy amendment, and cancellation.

Monolithic Front‑End Integration Mode

If a monolithic front‑end is used after middle‑platform construction, developers must handle thousands of APIs from N product lines, leading to complex routing, high maintenance effort, and difficulty adapting to API changes.

Micro‑Frontend Integration Mode

Adopting micro‑frontend integration separates responsibilities: front‑end teams focus on the integration main page, loading and routing micro‑frontends, while back‑end middle‑platform teams develop the business micro‑services and their paired micro‑frontends. This reduces technical complexity for front‑end developers and lowers communication and testing costs.

Insurance Order Sales Scheme

A "product channel" consists of micro‑frontends, dedicated underwriting middle‑platforms, and shared services (payment, commission, reinsurance, unified views). Each channel isolates code, deployment, and functionality per product line, enabling independent development, testing, and deployment.

Front‑End Integration Main Page

The integration main page acts as a portal, aggregating all micro‑frontends. Based on user selections, it loads the appropriate micro‑frontend (e.g., product‑specific entry form) and coordinates with back‑end services to complete the full insurance sales flow, providing a consistent user experience across all products.

Key Values and Significance of Implementing Micro‑Frontends

Micro‑frontends simplify front‑end integration, allowing teams to focus on UI composition without dealing with back‑end APIs. They promote clear responsibility boundaries, isolation, and independent deployment, reducing communication and testing costs, enabling faster releases, and offering high reusability—micro‑frontends can be loaded on demand or even packaged as standalone apps.