High Volume Quoting

Some insurers need to handle high volumes of quote requests generated by external applications, such as the web sites of comparative raters and quote aggregators. A comparative rater’s web site enables its agents to view and choose between quotes from multiple insurers. A quote aggregator’s web site enables consumers to view and choose quotes from multiple insurers. Insurers who receive these requests must generate large volumes of quotes. Users of these web sites expect to see information quickly, therefore PolicyCenter must quickly generate the quote. The insurer may have multiple PolicyCenter instances that handles these requests. These instances are referred by as quote-only instances of PolicyCenter.

Most of these high volume requests do not result in a policy. Therefore, it is desirable to save the quotes in an external database rather than the PolicyCenter database.

For these types of insurers, High Volume Quoting recommends a quoting architecture and provides an API and interface for generating quotes. To handle the high volume of quote requests, the architecture uses multiple instances of PolicyCenter. All instances leverage the same PolicyCenter version and configuration. One or more quote-only instances process quotes directly from comparative raters and quote aggregators. The architecture uses a separate PolicyCenter system-of-record (SOR) to complete submissions, issue policies, and perform subsequent actions on the policy.

See also

• Search quotes user interface

Handling lower volumes of quote requests

Every PolicyCenter instance, even the SOR, includes the API which provide quotes that are stored outside the PolicyCenter instance. If you handle a lower volume of quote requests, you can use this API with the PolicyCenter SOR handling quote requests. Store the quotes outside the SOR database until they are bound.

Keeping quick quotes outside the main database

In a submission, you can choose to do a Quick Quote rather than a Full Application. In the base configuration, Quick Quote stores the quotes in the PolicyCenter SOR database. If your bind rate on these policies is low, you can modify Quick Quote to store the quote outside the SOR database until the quote is bound. You can do this by modifying the Quick Quote wizard to provide the quote and then call the Quoting Data plugin to write the quote to the quoting table.

Searching the quote store from the SOR

The quote store is the database that holds quote requests generated by quote-only instances of PolicyCenter. The PolicyCenter SOR that is integrated with quote-only instances of PolicyCenter provides the ability to search these quote requests. You can then convert a quote request to a submission in the SOR, assigning it to an account along the way. Just like any other submission, you can modify and bind this submission.