When evaluating modern policy administration systems, carriers must consider adaptability in addition to the traditional dimensions of functionality and technical fit. Adaptability is the measure of how well a system will support business and technical requirements that are not yet known.
But how do you measure adaptability? How do you determine whether an insurance system is truly adaptive?
At Adaptik Corporation, adaptability is a core tenant of our flagship product, the PolicyWriter policy administration solution. We know adaptability. In fact, we define adaptability. In our view, there are 12 characteristics all truly adaptive systems. Here, we share the third: adaptable production composition. Find the first two here and check back often – the other nine are coming soon.
Various product entities — such as line of business, coverages and forms — provide a foundation for carriers to compose multiple insurance products. Unfortunately, traditional policy admin solutions have typically lacked the flexibility to quickly adjust, add or remove product entities and their details to meet the changing business needs of P&C insurance. This rigidity in product definition has cost insurers time and money while substantially increasing their exposure to risk.
In addition to providing flexible data definition for policies, an adaptive system’s configuration facility also makes it possible to configure the data that is used to describe the insurance products themselves. In other words, product definition is not limited to a particular data model that has been hard-wired into the system.
When evaluating a policy administration solution, consider a solution that provides a configurable product definition, enabling changes or additions to product entities and their details through configuration. An adaptive policy admin solution, like PolicyWriter, includes comprehensive configuration capabilities to make adjustments on the fly, without requiring database or programming changes. Changes — including modifying the product structure and supporting products like personal lines package policies — can be easily configured within such an adaptive solution.
Introducing new product entities and attributes without having to make programming changes requires a multi-tiered metadata architecture that enables the data capture content to vary dynamically throughout the system for both the product and policy data. It is this ability that sets adaptive systems apart from applications with rudimentary service-based architectures that are constantly adjusted as new entities and descriptors are added.
