Products & services. duck Creek is a provider of innovative software and services to the insurance industry, providing next-generation
policy administration, product configuration and definition, rating and billing for the Property & Casualty and Healthcare insurance markets.
duck Creek systems will empower insurers by providing them with flexible, modern, and dynamic tools to:
The Relationship Between Product
Definition and Policy Processing
By Charity McGill
distributing a product to market was once a simple process. After changing
the product, paper applications were mailed to producers, who filled them
out by hand and mailed them back. It wasn’t until we started automating
the application-to-issuance process that product distribution became such
a challenge. The process now requires updating several legacy systems,
portals, policy processing systems, rating engines, forms systems, reporting
databases and so forth. The application is not accessible for writing business
until all the systems are updated. Ironically, our streamlined policy processing
is getting in the way of selling products.
An understanding of the relationship between policy processing and
insurance product definition is the key to finding a solution to this complex
problem. rolling back a few decades, the only change made to process
business would be printing a new application and mailing it to producers.
Today’s expectation of online policy processing is extending the definition of
a product. It can no longer just be limited to the effort required to build and
ship paper applications, policy forms, rate cards and manuals. now product
definition must include such things as workflow, rules processing, automated
underwriting, and interactive application forms.
The following example illustrates the point. dozens of new eco-friendly
homebuilding materials are available for home construction. For the sake of
a point, pretend new research has determined that some of those materials
create more of a fire hazard. As a response, the underwriting and actuarial
teams are adding new factors and underwriting rules to the product. Before
policies can be processed with those changes, the rating engine must be
updated, the rules engine must be updated and applications need to be
modified. While rating and rule updating may have been made easier through
configuration tools, users still cannot process business until the online
application has been modified to collect all the information required to
process the new rules and rates. The users of our systems still must tell us
the type of material the insured is using in his home—not to mention small
application rules will need to be tweaked to know how and when to ask if new
materials were used.
1807 Jones St.
Bolivar, MO 65613-3305
866.382.5832
www.duckcreektech.com
