Product Development & Management

[Webinar Recap] Bridging the Gap in Insurance Product Development

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Image showing industry experts who speak about insurance product development.

In this blog, we recap our webinar, “Bridging the Gap in Insurance Product Development”. Click HERE to watch the entire webinar.

Looking to bridge the gap in your insurance product development?

Learn how carriers can utilize Jama Connect® to increase efficiency across the development process and more effectively deliver high quality products on time and on budget.

During this informative session, Lianne Warford, Senior Business Analyst at LHW Consulting, and Steven Meadows, Principal Solutions Lead at Jama Software®, discuss how this newly available insurance framework and dataset streamlines and simplifies product development for the insurance industry.

Gain insights into:

  • Overcoming common insurance industry challenges
  • Leveraging the benefits of a modern requirements management solution
  • The new insurance framework available in Jama Connect, with off-the-shelf elements for enhanced workflow and efficiency

Discover how Jama Connect allows carriers to innovate, bring products to market quicker, and ultimately better serve their customers.

Below is an abbreviated transcript of our webinar.

Bridging the Gap in Insurance Product Development

Steven Meadows: Okay, so today, we have a pretty packed agenda. We’re going to be starting off or Lianne’s going to be talking about legacy insurance requirements management. Following that, we’ll be talking about how you can overcome some of the common insurance industry challenges, some of the important considerations for streamlined insurance product development. After that, I’ll be talking about the problem with legacy tools and insurance product development, followed by best practices for an effective development strategy. I’ll then be providing a brief introduction to Jama Connect for Insurance, very high level overview. And then finally, we’ll end with a solution key takeaways and questions. And with that, Lianne, go ahead.

Lianne Watford: All right, thanks Steven so much. I appreciate this opportunity to work with Jama Software. I want to get started today with talking about different scenarios, two main scenarios where requirements are needed in the insurance industry. So we have the policy administration systems that automate the day-to-day operations of an insurance company. And the second area is the new and enhanced insurance products and services that insurance companies want to undertake. So let’s just dive right in. It has a lot of information, so let’s get started. So from the policy administration system, while every insurance company’s unique, processes that all insurance companies share for the day-to-day operations are quite common. And I’d venture to say that you would have to look long and hard to find an insurance company today that doesn’t have some type of policy admin system, whether it be a homegrown system that they’ve done themselves or utilizing some other type of software vendor.

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Watford: So if you take a look at the areas that are common, you have your policy administration. So every insurance policy starts with a quote and there’s quite a bit of information that needs to be captured. You’ve got your insured name, address, and contact information among others. You have information about the risk that’s being insured, whether it’s a house, a car, or business. And there are specific details for each types of risks that have to be captured to provide an accurate rate for the policy. You’ve got your coverages that are needed for each of the specific types of risks like property damage and liability coverage, and there’s lots of information that needs to be captured around that as well. And then once the policy is bound and issued, there’s several different types of documents such as declaration pages, rating sheets, etc, that have to be generated and are dependent on specific policy details.

And while those requirements are related to the insured risk and coverages, there’ll be an entirely different set of requirements for the output that describe the information about both the static and the variable data that’s needed to be printed. So that’s a ton of information right there. If you haven’t really captured it, we’ve just hit one bullet point under the policy admin. And then you’re always going to have the need to make a change to the policy at some point. And those are processed as endorsements. And while some of these requirements can be reused from the quote bind and issue process, there’ll also be certain rules for different types of endorsements that’ll need to be captured as separate requirements. And then you also have the output that’s specific to those related endorsements. Again, more stuff. And then you also have the processes around your cancellations and reinstatements for underwriting reasons, and you’re going to have documents that go along with that as well.

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Watford: All of those have to have requirements for the related output and downstream effects as well. And then hopefully the insured’s going to be happy with your service at your company and they’ll want to renew the policy for another term. So yep, there goes another set of specific requirements that are associated with the processing of the renewal as well as the output that’s associated. That’s a big mouthful of information. But then the next step you’ve got to do is collect the money for the premium that’s generated on the policy. So you gather requirements for down payments if you require them. You also provide payment plan options to allow them to pay, and installments are all at one time, so there’s lots of requirements around that. Then you also have special rules for nonpayment of premium cancellations and reinstatements that are different from your underwriting cancellations and reinstatements, different set of requirements.

And then you have to process refunds and collections. Again, and there’s all types of outputs that go along with these processes as well that have to be documented. And then of course, the big thing for an insurance company is your annual statement. That’s your accounting for what insurance companies do. And so, there’s all kinds of requirements for your annual statement, annual statement lines, and statistical reporting. Again, a ton of requirements. And then last but not least is your claims administration, which is the reason that you actually have insurance, right? So that if you need to make a claim, so you have your requirements around first notice of loss and then there’s a ton of information that they have to capture, lots of things that they have to do in that area as well. Come out and inspect, assign agents, all different types of processes for your claims.

And then you ultimately want to make a payment to the insured when it’s needed and processing of reinsurance if your company handles reinsurance. So that’s a mouthful of information and lots of requirements that maybe a lot of people don’t think about when it comes to insurance day-to-day operations. And then when you move on to thinking about the company wants to have new and enhanced insurance products and services. So you’ve got new products that you want to offer, you have new states and lines of business and coverages that you want to move into. And then if you want to enhance existing products, you’ve got rate changes, additional coverages you want to provide. And then there’s all kinds of interfaces, imager, quick rater, all types of interfaces into insurance policy admin systems that help integrate your business. And then not to mention, you’ve got to upgrade those existing interfaces because softwares are continuously evolving.

To watch the entire webinar, visit:
Bridging the Gap in Insurance Product Development


Steven Meadows
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