Policy Management and Administration
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The "Core Processing" of the Insurance Business Information and Articles | Directories of Providers The insurance policy is the contract between the customer and the insurance company. In this context, the information we are offering here pertains to the life cycle of the policy, to the life cycle of included systems, and to the adjacent supporting systems. Policy life cycle Systems, processes and procedures are all used by the staff responsible for policy processing. Here, new policy processing includes all functions from new policy data capture, through underwriting and rating to policy issue. Policy maintenance wraps the policy change and endorsement steps and extends to renewal, cancellation, reinstatement etc. Management, statistical and regulatory reporting are components too. Included Systems LifeCycle In some cases one major computer application may support a great variety of functions - most of those described. In other cases, company by company, a number of different systems may be integrated into the processing environment. Systems which may be separate include underwriting, rating and reporting. A rating system may include a number of underwriting rules to the extent that there is no other underwriting system. In any case, rating may vary province by province and product by product, and as rates change over time, application of those rates is subject to company policy as well. The life cycle of rates, and application rules, is important. Similarly if there is a separate underwriting system, the objective of straight-through immediate processing depends on the capability of this system and the information it processes and rules it represents. These rules, and the definition of the data it employs, must be maintained and managed in order to meet not only speed of processing objectives, but also corporate profitability and competitive targets. Reporting of data is frequently a component of policy processing applications. The ability to derive greater value from these reports has spawned data warehouses, data marts, online analytics programs (OLAP) and so on. These are becoming richer in their capability, not only for any kind of slice and dice real-time analysis but also for the audience which can now go beyond corporate internal users, to intermediaries, and in the case of risk managers and group plans, the customer. The timeframe and quality of the data and the quality in conjunction with the richness of the tools enable the ultimate value to be derived. Adjacent Systems At the front end of the policy management processes are data collection functions - the interfaces to call and web centres and intermediaries. Arguably beside the policy system is a client and prospect system, as well as feeds for data needed for underwriting. The claims system needs coverage data, and in turn must feedback loss information to support policy change and renewal processing. Many of these are included in other topical areas on our resource centre (Distribution, Claims), but some are included here. Here then some of the tools, solutions, and services which are being deployed in this pursuit of Policy Administration excellence. This information will mostly have some Internet linkage, given the nature of this site. We try to make it all relevant to the business in Canada. If you have a comment, paper, product or service you would like us to consider posting, send it to Doug Grant at doug.grant@insurance-canada.ca. Also send us new announcements pertinent to insurance Policy Management. Articles, editorials, commentary, research and published material pertaining to Canadian insurance and policy management & administration.
For older articles, see the archive of information & articles. 
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