Managing rate books and rate tables
Rate books contain a group of related rate tables. More precisely, each rate book edition groups a specific set of rate table versions. When you edit rate table content in a rate book, PolicyCenter creates a new version of that rate table. The rate book includes the new rate table. You can manage rate book editions in PolicyCenter.
As soon as you activate a rate book by moving it to active status, the rate book is available for production use. To ensure the integrity and auditability of policies rated with the active rate book, you cannot make changes to an active rate book and its contents.
If any rate table in an active rate book requires a change to the content, you must create a new edition of the rate book. In the new edition, you can update the rate table. Updated rate tables are assigned a new version internally, in the context of that new edition of the rate book. The system automatically creates a new version of that rate table. This behavior allows previous versions of the rate table to be preserved in existing rate books that reference or own the specific version of the rate table. To avoid proliferating rate table versions unnecessarily, rate tables that remain unchanged in the newly versioned rate book continue to reference the existing rate table.
For this reason, there are three different relationships between a rate book edition and a rate table version. The relationships are:
- Referencing – Another rate book edition owns this rate table version. Updating it results in a new Owned – Not Shared rate table version.
- Owned – Shared – This rate table version was created in this rate book edition but other rate book editions now reference this same rate table version. This relationship type only applies to active rate books.
- Owned – Not Shared – This rate table version was created in this rate book edition but no other rate book editions yet reference this same rate table version. Provided the rate book is still in draft mode, you can update this rate table version without creating a new version of the rate table.
Sometimes changes to the rate book are necessary. Changes to a rate book can be driven by regulatory changes or business reasons. Some changes add rows to one or more rate tables. Other changes add or remove columns (parameters) from rate tables. Certain changes require that you make a new edition of the rate book. In addition, the rate book status affects the types of changes you can make.
Changes to rate routines
You can change a rate routine if it is not included in a rate book or it if is only included in draft rate books. You cannot change a rate routine that is used in a promoted rate book.
Considerations for rate book maintainability
Rate books contain a set of rate tables and rate routines.
The size of the rate book, gauged by the number and complexity of included rate tables and rate routines, impacts maintainability and regression testing. Smaller rate books may support a quicker development cycle, more effective unit testing, and the ability to constrain necessary regression testing to affected areas of the rating process.
The simplest choice is to use a single rate book for each policy line and share logic through the inclusion of common rate routines and rate table. For example, you have common rate routines and rate tables. Each policy line has a rate book which includes these common elements and also includes rate routines and rate tables specific to the line.
However, some implementations may benefit from a higher level decomposition strategy. For example you can have dedicated rate books which include only include rate routines and rate tables that apply to all lines. By implementing cascaded lookup, you can have country-wide rate tables and rate routines in one country-wide rate book and the state deviations in state-specific rate books.
You can also separate independent streams of logic into separate rate books. For example, within a single policy line, individual rate books contain the rate routines and rate tables for calculating specific types of costs. Or within a multi-line product, each policy line has its own rate book.
Rate book storage self-contained
A self-contained rate book owns all of the included rate tables.
You can make a rate book self-contained if both of the following are true:
- The rate book is in Stage status
- The rate book is referencing rate tables
Business examples
In a development environment, you have created multiple editions of a rate book which you do not wish to replicate in production. You are now up to edition 10, and the rate book has been tested on the staging server and is ready for production. Edition 10 contains links back to various previous editions of the rate book. You only wish to deploy the 10th edition onto the production server. Therefore, on the staging server, you make the rate book self-contained.
In a production environment, you have a rate book with 5 editions. Due to regulatory changes, you must implement major changes in rate tables in the 5th edition of the rate book. Because the changes are far-reaching, you no longer wish to reference rate tables. When you move the rate table back to stage status, you make the rate book self-contained.