Rating Management overview

Guidewire Rating Management provides tools that you can use to manage and maintain rate books, rate tables, and rate routines in PolicyCenter. The rating execution is specifically implemented to calculate full term premium amounts and to prorate those amounts for the appropriate portion of the policy term.

The general rating process is implemented using multiple components.

Rating engine plugin is an interface definition and plugin implementation handles the premium calculation and proration process – the full rating execution. The base implementation uses a hierarchy of classes and flexible logic that product and line-specific implementations can use.

Costs are the containers for a monetary amount associated with a policy for premium, taxes, discounts and surcharges, and other amounts. In rating execution, costs are represented by the CostData Gosu object.

Rate flow is the logic in the rating engine plugin which orchestrates the premium calculation for a policy line. You can customize the rate flow implementation to meet your detailed requirements.

Rate books define a set of rate tables and rate routines. From a rate book, you can manage rate tables and rate routines, and approve, test, and promote the rate book to production. For example, you can create a rate book that groups a set of rate tables and rate routines that provide the premium for a particular insurance product or offering.

Rate tables provide definitions for a rate factor lookup table. Rate table content is defined within a rate book. Rate tables contain columns representing parameters used to lookup a value, known as a factor. You can use a factor as a rate factor, class, or tier, or as code for use in further lookups. You can view, create, or edit rate tables in PolicyCenter. For example, you can edit rates or add entries for new coverages and limits. For a particular rate table definition, you can specify the parameter combinations and resulting rate factors to assign to that combination.

Rate routines define the logic to calculate a premium amount or perform other operations in support of premium calculations. Rate routines define the algorithm for calculating the rate for coverages, taxes, and other costs on a policy. You can create, view, and edit rate routines in PolicyCenter. The rate routine can reference Gosu methods which:

Perform utility functions such as polynomial calculations
Call out to third-party systems to get factors
Implement complex rating logic

Rating worksheets show the actual values that the rate routine used to calculate the rate for a quoted policy or policy transaction. You can use rating worksheets to debug rate routines, validate rates, or get detail showing how a coverage was rated.

Parameter sets are associated with rate tables and rate routines. Parameter sets contain parameters to pass to rate routines as discrete items or as part of a data structure. Parameter sets determine the information available for use within a rate routine. Parameter sets also determine the information available for setting the default argument sources in the rate table definition.

Rating Management provides tools to perform the following types of tasks:

Change rates or other factors for a given class code, vehicle class, construction type, or territory code.
Add new entries in a rate table to incorporate new coverages or new limit options.
Create new rate tables to introduce new factors.
Create rate routines that define your rating algorithms.
Test changes to rate books by generating test policy periods with impact testing.

Rating Management by line of business

In the base configuration, Rating Management provides rating for homeowners, personal auto, and commercial property lines of business. Through configuration, you can extend Rating Management to other lines of business.

Sample data for Rating Management

In the default PolicyCenter application, the sample data includes rate books, rate tables, and rate routines for use with Guidewire Rating Management. You can use these as a starting point. The rating data is in the small sample data set. The rating data is also in the large data set because that set includes the small data set.

The gw.sampledata.SampleData class loads the rating data in the small sample data set by calling the loadSampleDataSet method:

loadCollection(new SmallSampleRatingData())