Reading a certificate request and preparing the answer
A contractor sends a request wanting additional insured status, primary and noncontributory wording and a waiver of subrogation, whether or not the policy behind it carries any of those. The work is reading what was actually asked, checking each item against the endorsements on file, and preparing the certificate with every gap flagged for a licensed person, because an agency can be held to wording it certified that the policy never contained. The issuing click stays with that person. What changes is that the answer arrives with the discrepancies already found rather than discovered by a law firm two years later.
A certificate request arrives as a sentence in an email, and answering it correctly requires deciding which endorsements the policy actually grants.
The agency management system is the record, and a standardised download feed keeps parts of it current. The feed is positional flat file in origin, its coverage varies by carrier and by line of business, and a policy that arrives without matching an existing record lands in a queue somebody clears by hand.
- Applied Epic
- Vertafore AMS360
- Outlook
When this is the wrong thing to build
Pick something else if your policy data in the management system is not current enough to check a request against. Then this produces confident wrong answers, which is worse than slow ones.
The constraint that shapes it
Producing a quote or binding coverage happens under a licence that is issued per state and per line, and separately under a carrier appointment, so a person can be licensed without being appointed. More on how this sector works.
A file arrives. The fields come back typed and checkable. Read what this shape is, or start from one of these.
- Reading dates out of a ratified contract
- Abstracting a commercial lease into dated fields
- Filling an MLS input sheet from the listing agreement
- Turning a docket entry into a calendar
- Turning a delivered transcript into a usable set of cites
- Coding a filing fee to the matter that will repay it
- Can I tick the subrogation waived box on an ACORD 25 without the endorsement?
- How do I know whether a policy carries a blanket additional insured endorsement?
- What do I do when a certificate request asks for primary and noncontributory?
- How do I answer a request naming an endorsement the policy does not have?
- Why can an agency be sued over the wording on a certificate?
Back to insurance agencies, or see how this is priced and scoped.