Homeowners

Homeowners insurance provides protection against the financial consequences of losses related to owning and renting a home. A homeowners policy is a combination of property and liability coverages.

In the base implementation, the homeowners line is designed according to the United States market. You can use the base implementation as a starting point for implementing homeowners in the United States and for other countries. For example, homeowners in the United States sets certain default limits as percentages of a primary limit. You can remove this dependency and these default limits.

The homeowners implementation provides policy types for insuring dwellings, rentals, and condominiums. Policy types are implemented as coverage parts.

Sample data

The small sample data set contains a homeowners policy for Alicia Shirley. Alice Applegate (aapplegate) is the user assigned to this policy.

Coverage form

In addition to policy type, homeowners provides coverage forms. Coverage forms further the patterns available on the policy. Coverage form availability is related to policy type.

Note: Within the industry the term form is used to describe a category offered on a product. However, within PolicyCenter, the term form is used in a different way to describe the physical contracts that define coverages and endorsements. To avoid confusion, Guidewire uses the term coverage form to describe the categories offered on a product that in the industry is typically referred to as a form.

There are a number of homeowners coverage forms in common use across the United States. In the base configuration, homeowners includes the following coverage forms:

  • HO2 – Broad Form
  • HO3 – Special Form, most commonly issued
  • HO4 – Tenant Contents, also known as Renters
  • HO5 – Comprehensive
  • HO6 – Condominium Unit Owners

The following table shows the coverage forms available for each policy type:

Policy type

Coverage form

Dwelling

H02, H03, H05

Rental

HO4

Condominium

HO6

In homeowners, much of the content as well as the configuration of rules is closely tied to policy type. Some is also tied to coverage form. The policy type (dwelling, condominium, or rental) broadly defines pattern availability. The coverage form (HO2, HO3) further limits pattern availability.

In the homeowners line, pattern availability is based on policy type, whether the policy insures a dwelling, condominium, or rental. After selecting policy type, pattern availability is further narrowed by the selected coverage form. If the policy insures a dwelling, pattern availability is further narrowed down based on the level of insurance, specified as HO2, HO3, and HO5. For a rental policy, the only level is HO4.

Dwellings per policy

In the user interface, homeowners allows you to specify only one dwelling per policy. This approach simplifies the user workflow and is in line with standard homeowners policies in the United States, which also allow only one dwelling to be insured per policy.

However, you can extend the implementation to accept multiple dwellings per policy if needed. The underlying data model supports multiple dwelling policies. You can configure the user interface and extend the Gosu code to support multiple dwellings.

States and jurisdictions

In the base configuration, homeowners provides a generic version of each policy type that applies to all jurisdictions. Some United States state-specific examples are provided. For example, homeowners includes some deductible coverage terms and coverage term options that vary by state. However, complete state data is not included. Through configuration, you can create implementations for specific jurisdictions.

In the base configuration of homeowners, you can assign only one jurisdiction (U.S. state) per policy. If you extend homeowners to cover multiple dwellings in a single policy, the underlying data model and Gosu code supports dwellings in more than one jurisdiction.

Schedule endorsements and rating

In homeowners, several endorsements on homeowners policies require a schedule of objects to be included. Examples are schedules of personal property either on or off the premises, and schedules of other structures either on or off the premises.

Homeowners includes schedules that require various types of rating. The base configuration includes examples of each schedule type to illustrate how to handle the different types of schedule endorsements.

In some schedules, rating applies the premium at the schedule level, covering all items in the schedule. In other cases, such as for Scheduled Personal Property, rating applies premium at the individual item level. And in some cases, such as jewelry or fine arts, rating applies premium at the item group or type level.

Coverages, exclusions, and conditions

In homeowners, the base configuration includes coverages, exclusions, and conditions for the United States market. Homeowners uses these categories to filter searches and to reduce the potential number of items in lists.

Forms

The base configuration provides sample forms which demonstrate common patterns of inference for homeowners. Insurers are expected to configure their own forms for homeowners.

Authority profiles and underwriting rules

The base configuration includes examples of authority profiles and underwriting rules. In homeowners, each insurer may define authority profiles and underwriting rules relating to risk selection and underwriting behavior. You can extend and modify the included rules to meet your requirements. Homeowners underwriting rule names begin with HOP.

Full application quote

In homeowners, the base configuration accepts only full application quote types. No separate Quick Quote configuration is provided.

Offerings

The base configuration of homeowners does not include offerings. Through configuration, you can implement offerings to meet your specific requirements.

Integrations

The base configuration of homeowners does not include any integrations. Integrations typically performed when implementing PolicyCenter include rating, print/issuance, customer address book, claims, billing, and others. For homeowners, you may wish to integrate with functionality to obtain the following information:

  • Protection class code
  • Insurance to value (ITV), also known as Insured Value Report (IVR)

The workflow and design of the screens anticipates the need for integrations such as Interactive Voice Response (IVR), territory class derivation, and protection class derivation. Other standard PolicyCenter integrations, such as address book, rating engine, print/issuance system, and so forth, are available.

Insurance to value

Many insurers integrate with service providers for insurance to value (ITV) calculations. Homeowners provides a separate Dwelling Construction screen to facilitate implementing the integration with a single screen.

You can customize input fields and data entry rules in the PCF to match the requirements of your service provider. You can add a button that manually triggers the service on demand. You also can add an automated interface call during the submission process, for example prior to quote or prior to bind. Upon return, set the value of the result fields to the values returned from the service. Values specify the limits. You can:

  • Replace values.
  • Compare values to drive underwriting rules and rating. This requires that you extend the data model and PCF files.