Passing approval requests to underwriters
In the underwriting approval process, the policy period can be referred to users with higher or different authority profiles. These users receive activities notifying them they need to approve issues on the policy. A particular policy may be referred to several users before being approved. When the underwriter feels that the review of the policy is complete, whether issues have been approved or not, the underwriter clicks the Release Lock button. This action releases the policy from underwriting, and PolicyCenter sends an activity to the user who initiated the referral. The InitialReferrer role stores the name of this user. (The underwriter can modify the recipient and other fields in the activity.)
To facilitate passing policies between agents and underwriters, a given policy period can be flagged as edit locked and quote hidden. After an agent hands these policies to an underwriter, the agent usually cannot edit the policy or view the quote. The permissions for editing or viewing the quote while under review are usually reserved for underwriters.
Edit Locked Flag
When the EditLocked flag is true, only users with the editlockoverride permission can edit the policy. The intention is that this permission is granted to underwriters but not to producers. The EditLocked flag is set to true when the user clicks the Request Approval button to request approval from another user. If a policy has not been formally submitted for underwriting review, the underwriter expects the quote to be hidden and the policy locked for editing. Therefore, the EditLocked flag is also set to true whenever a user with the editlockoverride permission quotes a policy. The EditLocked flag is set back to false when the underwriter sends the policy back to an agent by clicking the Release button on the associated activity. (Click Release Lock to get to the activity.) The Release button is available even if the policy has blocking issues. The EditLocked flag is also set to false when the policy is bound and/or issued. The EditLocked flag is always set to false when a job starts.
EditLocked flag to determine whether or not the policy can be edited. The EditLocked flag does not lock the PolicyPeriod object. Quote Hidden Flag
When the QuoteHidden flag is set to true, only users with the quotehideoverride permission can see the quote for that PolicyPeriod. Similar to the editlockoverride permission, the intention is that the permission only be granted to underwriters.
The QuoteHidden flag is set to true when requesting approval if the job does not already have a valid quote. The flag is also set to true during quoting if the PreQuoteRelease blocking point has blocking issues or if the policy being quoted is marked as EditLocked. Thus, if an underwriter with editlockoverride quotes a policy, the policy will end up both edit locked and quote hidden. The QuoteHidden flag is set to false if a user, such as a producer, who does not have the editlockoverride permission approves all issues blocking quote release.
In the default configuration, when EditLocked is set to false, QuoteHidden is also set to false. Invalidating the quote also sets QuoteHidden to false. However, for policies that are under edit lock, QuoteHidden is immediately set to true on quoting. Thus any policy in underwriting review will have its quote hidden if it has ever had an invalid quote while under review.
QuoteHidden flag. The QuoteHidden flag does not lock the PolicyPeriod object. Initial Referrer User Role
The InitialReferrer user role facilitates passing policies between underwriting and producers. The initial referrer is the user who referred the policy to underwriting. When requesting approval for issues on a policy period, if the InitialReferrer user role is not set, the role is set to the current user. When the underwriter releases the policy by clicking Release, the InitialReferrer role is unset. An activity is sent to the InitialReferrer on the period. You can customize this by using activity assignment as described in Assignment in PolicyCenter. You can also customize the InitialReferrer user role.
The InitialReferrer user role is a transient role assigned to users in the context of their role in the job. Because it is a transient role, it is assigned by the job code rather than being assigned to the user in the Administration tab. Because it is a transient role, it is not in the UserRole typelist.