Underwriting referral reasons raise underwriting issues

Underwriting referral reasons cause underwriting issues to be raised the next time a policy transaction is run on for that policy. Referral reasons raise underwriting issue types that have the Checking Set equal to Referral. In the base configuration, the Underwriting Rule user interface does not display Referral.

Use underwriting referral reasons only used when a notable condition arises outside of a policy transaction, possibly outside of the data that PolicyCenter maintains on the policy. If the condition can be evaluated based on data in PolicyCenter, then it is usually preferable to use an underwriting issue rather than an underwriting referral reason.

You can use referral reasons as a convenient way to add fully-formed underwriting issues to a policy from an external application. These fully-formed issues do not require additional data from the policy in PolicyCenter. Using them in this way requires that the external application has knowledge of the underwriting guidelines, such as when to consider claim levels as excessive.

Underwriting referral reasons can by added by a PolicyCenter user. For example, a PolicyCenter user adds a referral reason in response to an on-site visit or discussion with the insured.

Underwriting referral reasons can be added by an external system through an API. For example, an external claim system stores the loss claims for a policy. The external system notes that loss claims are unacceptably high. The external system sends a message to PolicyCenter to add a underwriting referral reason on the policy. The next time a policy transaction runs on the policy, PolicyCenter creates an underwriting issue for this referral reason.

A user cannot approve an underwriting referral reason, but the user can remove it. For example, a visit to a customer site reveals numerous safety violations, so you add an underwriting referral reason to the policy. At a subsequent visit, you find that the safety violations have been fixed. Therefore, you remove the underwriting referral reason from the policy.

In some situations it may be more appropriate to avoid referral reasons, and use underwriting issues directly. You can configure PolicyCenter to make calls to an external application, and extend the Policy entity to store data from the external application. For example, a claim system does not know the total premium of the policy and cannot compute a loss ratio. So it cannot send a fully-formed referral reason to PolicyCenter. PolicyCenter can retrieve the loss information from the claim system when it evaluates the appropriate checking sets. (The default integration with a claim system implements this retrieval. See Accessing summary loss information from the claim system.) Alternately, the external claim system could use an API to send loss information to PolicyCenter. PolicyCenter could use this information when raising underwriting issues.