Life in the insurance industry is full of decisions based on rules. Does a potential customer meet the basic qualifications? How does a rate change based on the answers provided on a form? What is the maximum value of a policy? What is the agent’s commission for an individual customer? These decisions, whether they be about policies, constraints, or calculations, are easier to make with a rules engine in place.
A rules engine determines the logic for your business processes. Take, for example, the processing of a form. Using a simple true/false logic, you can set rules to determine how a form moves through your organization. When someone submits a policy request form, a rule performs a simple check to see if the form is filled out completely. A “true” forwards it on to the next rule; a “false” sends it back to the customer. You can build additional rules that trigger additional actions, moving the application form through the necessary steps until it is either approved or denied.
Rules engines do more than just move a form down the line. For a loan application, a rule may also assign a rate to the application. Rules based on income, credit score, and other qualifying criteria are run through the rules engine to perform calculations that result in the loan’s rate. By leveraging the ability to reach external data through APIs, this rule always relies on the most recent financial data to make this decision.
Benefits of Using a Rules Engine
According to Consultancy.UK, two-thirds of the British workforce would prefer to automate the most repetitive aspects of their work. Doing this frees up quite a bit of time for working on other strategic business initiatives. However, more time for other things is not the only benefit gained by using a rules engine in the insurance industry. Automation helps your business in other ways as well. Some things you can do with automation include:
