Polaris Software Products - an overview

Polaris provides software support for electronic trading of insurance products. The elements required by insurers to develop, test and distribute insurance products for use by e-commerce or Point of Sale (POS) systems are provided. Polaris also provides the software needed by integrators to run the products as part of their total system, for example on broker systems or on the internet.

The two key components are:

ProductWriter^Ò - A suite of software facilities enabling the development of insurance products and their export for distribution to integrators.

Run Time Environment (RTE) - software which enables the insurer products to be run under the control of an integrators system. It includes the rating engine for provision of premium quotations.

Both of the above are supported by:

Dictionaries - a specification of the data which is used for the development and use of insurance products. There are currently separate dictionaries for UK Private Motor, UK Household, Irish Private Motor and UK Commercial business classes.

Industry Standards

The Polaris software tools are fully compliant with the established industry standards. They make use of industry standard code lists and support the standard business transactions (New Business, MTA, Renewal, Cancellation and Lapse) as well as standard EDI messages.

The key Polaris products are designed to support the introduction of standards in any area where it is beneficial and cost effective to do so. Although initially targeted at volume Point Of Sale business this does not limit their use for other business models.

How are they used?

The Polaris software tools support both the insurer and the intermediary requirements for electronic and Point Of Sale trading.

The insurer uses the Polaris ProductWriter^Ò suite to develop an insurance product (also known as an insurance scheme). This includes the data requirements, the rules for refers and declines etc, the premium rates (plus loadings and discounts) and the premium calculations. The product is tested and then output as an electronic file, which can be sent to the software house or intermediary either on a diskette or over a network.

The broker software house or intermediary will have developed a broking system which incorporates the Polaris RTE and can now load the insurer product file directly into the RTE. The system (or more likely a routine update) is then distributed to their broker client base or made available via the internet.

The broker using this system keys a customer’s insurance risk details into the system. This will usually include basic information such as name, address etc., details of the risk to be insured and an indication of the cover required. These details are passed to the RTE by the broker system and the product rules are run to provide a quote for the risk. If multiple products are on the system then all are run and a number of quotes are provided for the broker or customer to select the most appropriate.

The customer accepts the quote and this fact is input into the system and passed to the relevant product. It is possible that some additional information may be requested, which the broker also inputs. Finally the broker is prompted to print the supporting documentation as specified in the insurer’s product and an EDI message is produced for transmission back to the insurer.

The insurer receives the EDI message which confirms that the insured is on risk and enables their back office systems to be updated.

Benefits of the Polaris Approach

Benefit Area		Applicability to:
		Insurers	Intermediaries
1.	Cost Savings	ProductWriter provides a single industry standard format for product definition. This provides large cost-savings in the areas of definition of insurance schemes to software houses and subsequent testing. The need to support different specification formats for each software house is removed, where these have fully integrated the RTE, and this radically reduces the testing burden. Lower staff training costs since only the ProductWriter industry standard method of product definition need be used. For rating and other amendments the re-use of scheme definitions makes the process cheap and quick. Polaris provides templates for the major business classes. Taking these as a starting point, insurers can develop products very quickly. More frequent product changes can be undertaken and this allows more rapid and flexible response to marketplace developments - something which is not always cost-effective in a non-Polaris environment. New schemes can be developed as variations on existing templates so eliminating much of the development cycle time giving both cost and time savings. The ProductWriter software provides forms production and EDI functionality as well as scheme rules and this further reduces the specification work which insurers must undertake.	All insurers could provide product definitions in ProductWriter electronic file format thus allowing software houses to implement and intermediaries to run such schemes using the RTE without re-specification. The RTE provides intermediaries with a proven rating engine which can be rapidly deployed. New business classes can be supported without the expense of developing a new rating engine.
2.	Competitiveness	Lower product specification and distribution costs will translate into lower product expenses and more competitive products.	Some insurers are already offering discounts on their insurance products to reflect the savings the Polaris approach allows. Intermediaries would therefore have access to more competitive products by adopting a Polaris-based systems solution.
3.	Speed	The ProductWriter approach makes scheme development rapid - through re-use of existing templates and adoption of a single marketwide format for definition.	Intermediaries can have products which reflect current market trends since product update is a rapid and low-cost procedure in a Polaris environment.
4.	Industry Standards and distribution capability	ProductWriter is the industry standard method of insurance scheme definition. This provides future proofing of insurers’ investment in Polaris technology. No other product definition tool provides ProductWriter’s industry standard status.	This benefit applies equally to intermediaries and software houses.
5.	Integration with existing systems	Polaris technology will integrate with insurers’ existing policy processing and recording system whilst providing an industry standard method of product definition.	The RTE will provide an industry standard basis as a rating engine.
6.	Range of business classes supported and business expansion	Insurers can support a range of business types using the same technology base. ProductWriter currently supports specification of personal motor, householders, motorcycle, commercial package (eg offices, shops, hotels, surgeries, property owners and small business) and commercial vehicle	Intermediaries will be able to sell a broader range of products using the same technology infrastructure, based on the RTE.
7.	Confidentiality	Delivery of products to software houses which have integrated the RTE is effected using binary files. These are password protected and this prevents software houses, and other insurers, from gaining access to product definition information which an insurer may wish to keep confidential.