The Challenge
In the insurance industry the number of factors that affect any given premium in the quotation process can be quite large and the rules that are applied to the premium may be very complex.
The challenge was to provide the technology necessary to carry out quotation process in a flexible, scalable, robust, and standardized environment. The problem was twofold. First, the solution should have provided the functionality to create the data structure and rules that will be followed in the quotation process. Second, should have provided the functionality to request a quote from the system, following the rules previously defined.
Providing a framework to create a flexible data structure was the most complicated part of the system. A user should have been able to configure the data structure so it can produce quotes for any insurance business (life, home, motor, aircraft, cargo, etc). This was a nontrivial task as each line of insurance business has different set of attributes and rules. For example, in aircrafts, the number of pilots that flight the insured plane, their individual experience (and the combined experience) can be the basis for rules that affect the rates and hence the premium.
The Solution
AIT Infotech proposed to deliver a powerful calculation environment, which would be rapidly adaptable to the frequent changes in the insurer's business processes and at the same time would provide quoting services across all business lines.
AIT Infotech's specialists started with throughout assessment of the client's existing IT systems. Software Requirements Specifications document encompassed all the data we gathered. After we identified critical integration issues and the basic set of requirements, our senior programmers asigned for the project have created high level design & architectecture concept document. The document covered top-level design of the application server, database server, and client software. At AIT Infotech it is a common practice within such large scale projects to desribe design and architecture in object-oriented manner, based on software requirements.
We use object-oriented software design to create a holistic view of the whole structure and functionality of the system being developed. Object-oriented software design model contains the basic elements of the future software like classes, packages, components, etc. The model serves as a guiding line for the project team members. After software design document was created and signed off on client's side, we started the main development phase. The whole software development process was carried out within a custom taylored Rational Unified Process (RUP).
The solution was designed in three-tier architecture, that is - web clients and web services, web server and application server, the main database and quoting engine application. Quoting Engine provides both web service and its own embedded web client. Thus a client with any degree of complexity can be created. In order to provide load balancing, the main server's load can be distributed between middle-tier servers.
While other similar quoting solutions for insurance industry should be rewrited / recompiled during each significant change in requirements, the framework we delivered can be easily customized and reconfigured to suite specific department's needs with minimal time and financial efforts. This is possible with such custom programmed flexible product building tools as the quoting workflow designer.
In order to achieve maximum productivity on the end-user level, the system supports custom programmed real-time validations/hints system and features easy to use Graphic User Interface (GUI).
Our solution provided insurance managers with an ability to rapidly create custom insurance products based upon various conditions/formulas and dynamically keep track of all changes across product lines. We increased insurer's time to market while staying within a tough budget
AIT Infotech's solution delivered the following business benefits to Fortune 100 insurer:
Flexible insurance product building
Automatic tracking of all changes to products
High scalability
Tools and Technologies
- Application Server: Apache Tomcat
- Database Servers: MS SQL, DB2, MySQL
- Languages: Java, JSP/Struts, Hibernate, C#, SQL
Related links
http://www.ait-infotech.com/financial-software-development.html
