The Policy Management component lies at the core of insurance policy administration and is where policies, insurance coverage's, and financial activities are maintained and stored.

Key Features:

• The data is structured in two main groups: "policies" are defined as a collection of policy information and the policy's associated product(s), riders and benefits; "transactions" are defined as the instructions to perform a financial event (e.g. loan or withdrawal) and the storage for resulting policy values after that event has been processed.
• Policy management is connected to several other components when forming an administration system capability, such as Party for owner/insured and other roles, Billing for processing premium and loan billing, and Disbursement for handing the return of funds to a client.
• Policies consist of a set of coverages which in turn are defined in the Product component. Flexibility in defining and attaching coverages to policies provides significant opportunity in defining creative new products (e.g. combining life and annuity or other investment "coverages" in a single policy)
• Data structures are designed to optimize storage of data based on product types
• Transaction results capture point-in-time policy values for consistent reporting and reverse-recreate processing capabilities

The Commissions component enables the agency department to create the framework for calculating commissions and to use that framework to manage the payment of commissions to producing agents and their hierarchies.

Key Features:

• Configurable calculations
• Leverages producer information
• Extremely flexible definition of commission schedules and rates
• Commission payables tracking
• Producer accounts that can go negative and can have rules about when to trigger payments
• 1099 processing

The Case Management component is configured to facilitate the tracking and monitoring of activities needed to complete a business process.

Key Features:

• Define requirements and tasks to complete requirements through configuration
• Create model cases that act as reusable templates to establish an initial set of requirements/tasks
• Almost any business entity can be processed as a "case", such as a new business application, a marketing campaign, or a financial transaction

The Credit Card component supports the setup of credit cards and the management of credit card transactions.

Key Features:

• Creation of pending credit card transactions from other components (e.g. Billing)
• Creation of file extracts and external interface components to external systems for clearing credit card transactions
• Depending on the capabilities of partner clearing companies, the component can be configured to avoid storing actual credit card numbers in the system

The New Business Data Entry component allows for producers, underwriters, and administrators to quickly enter and process new applications.

Key Features:

• Applications can be submitted by either e-app or data entry
• After an application is submitted, orchestrations check against a company's unique business rules for validation
• New business cases automatically established as part of the submission process

The Underwriting component is configured to establish the default values that may be assigned during the underwriting process as well as store all risk assessment notes and decisions that were made by the underwriter.

Key Features:

• Associate rules to evaluate policy data and returned requirement results (e.g. lab results) to create preliminary decisions
• Jet issue capability
• Store underwriter notes separately and securely
• Can be expanded to track impairments

The Producer component is configured to allow for the management of all producer-centric data.

Key Features:

• Producer is linked to other components, allowing ability to see lists for things like "pending new business for a producer" and "all policies for a producer"
• Stores data related to: producer's agreement with the company (contract), the commission hierarchy, state level licensing details, carrier appointments, continuing education, and more
• Linkage to the Party component for name, address, and demographic details

The Billing component maintains billing information and creates individual and group level bills.

Key Features:

• Capture billing instructions for one-time and repetitive billing
• Many variations for billing methods and frequencies (including ninthly and tenthly)
• Generated bills can be viewed through the user interface
• Billing can be set up to handle premium, loan interest and loan principle bills at separate frequencies and for separate billing methods
• Bills can be combined for a variety of reasons such as list billing and householding

The Claims component allows an insurer to manage a claim throughout its lifecycle.

Key Features:

• Claim initiation
• Tracking activities associated with a claim (using case management)
• Tracking requirements and information about a claim
• Specifying claim payment details

The Reinsurance component is typically connected to Policy to track reinsurance contracts at the policy level.

Key Features:

• Set up and define agreements with reinsurance firms
• Treaties can be configured with rules to automatically reinsure new policies
• Policies can be reinsured across multiple reinsurers
• Linkage to claims
• Data extracts and reporting

The Cash component allows you to view and manage cash accounts, such as Suspense, Premium Deposit Funds, Special Frequency Billing Accounts and other cash accounts that are typically associated with but distinct from policy values.

Key Features:

• A Cash account may be associated with a policy, such as with a Premium Deposit Fund, or it may not, such as with General Suspense
• Cash can be applied to a policy as a payment
• Cash can be disbursed
• Cash is included in policy quotes
• General Ledger accounting can be automatically generated as cash is managed

The Disbursement component provides the ability to send funds out of the company and to withhold Federal and State taxes, when applicable.

Key Features:

• The Disbursement component is often linked with another component that triggers the need for the disbursement and supplies the amount to be disbursed
• The component also allows for scheduling a single disbursement for a future date and for scheduling recurring disbursements
• Disbursement instructions are captured to define payees, payment instructions, payment methods, and tax withholding

The Batch Payments component supports the entry and processing of sets of payments coming into the company. Also known as Cash Batch processing, groups of payments for many contracts/policies are entered as a batch to facilitate quality controls.

Key Features:

• Entry of multiple payments across policies
• Quality controls
• Use English terms to represent cash accounts
• Generate G/L accounting based on rules
• When a batch is processed, some payments will result in pending financial transactions and some will result in entries to cash or suspense accounts
• Includes the support of payments coming into the company via an electronic interface such as a list-bill feed from a group customer or a feed of payments recorded by a bank or credit card provider

The General Ledger component is configured to receive notifications of financial activity that must be tracked in the ledger and creates the appropriate accounting entries based on configured rules.

Key Features:

• Capture of the chart of accounts
• Configuration of rules that determine what accounting gets generated during the processing of a financial event
• Managing the history for G/L accounting
• Automated extracts for integration with 3rd party accounting systems

The Medical Information Bureau (MIB) Integration component is configured to store results obtained from the MIB during the underwriting of an insurance application as well as report codes back to the MIB after the underwriter assesses the risk of the application.

Key Features:

• Component uses the latest integration standards with MIB

The Producer NIPR Data component allows for integration with the NIPR's (National Insurance Producer Registry) Producer Database.

Key Features:

• Information from the Producer component is converted into NIPR's format, and transmitted via web service calls
• NIPR's system checks this data against their database, and the subsequent outgoing message is sent back to the Producer component to maintain that data
• Integration focuses on state license information and managing the appointment process

The Bank component allows for the storage and maintenance of bank account information typically associated with a party.

Key Features:

• Establish master list of banks
• Capture checking account routing and transit information for EFT transactions
• Capture and manage banking transactions (deposits and/or withdrawals)
• Standard ACH integration feeds – real-time or batch

The Reporting component allows for producer performance to be monitored through automated reports.

Key Features:

• Configurable metrics
• Grouping and drill-down on key performance indicators

The Fund component allows for the configuration and management of investment accounts.

Key Features:

• This component also allows for all parties associated with the fund to analyze fund performance
• Easy reallocation of investments into other funds as required

The Cycle Batch Process component allows an application to perform batch oriented business processes.

Key Features:

• The component takes a set of data files as input, processes the data, and produces a set of output data files
• Cycle BP provides the fault tolerance and scalability required for high-volume processing

The Party component is configured to allow for the management of all customer-centric data. The details of the Party component represent the information that applies to a person or organization.

Key Features:

• Component approach allows for party-centric solutions. For example, a person exists once and is linked as playing a role on one or more policies, thereby facilitating a Party view that shows all policies related to the person
• Party based closely on ACORD model
• Multiple addresses supported, including international addresses and seasonal addresses
• Addresses can be consistent across all policies related to the party, or can be different for each policy while still maintaining the single person
• Party also acts as a centralization mechanism for other components such as banking and credit card
• Relationships between partys (e.g. members of a household) can be maintained
• Easily extended to capture additional demographic information

The Portal component integrates all of the parts of a consolidated corporate web portal.

Key Features:

• Public facing pages are presented to authenticated users based on role, such as Customers, Corporate Office, Customer Service and Accounting
• Static content is managed

The Notes component provides a list of free form notes, entered by a user or generated by a system event, related to another component or entity (e.g. Case, Policy, Party, Producer).

Key Features:

• Notes provide a diary-like function to capture descriptions of activities or important information that must be tracked for a particular entity.
• Quick access to a summary of recent notes and events that occurred for an entity (e.g. for a particular policy)
• Prioritization of notes to increase awareness of sensitive items
• View and update security features

The Report component allows you to define and configure reports to be displayed on-line.

Key Features:

• Each defined report is associated with an external process (e.g. stored procedure, orchestration, or custom API) that retrieves the data for display in a view
• Results from the external process are mapped for UI display
• Parameters can be configured (e.g. user enters date range for report, which is passed on to the external process)
• Data can be sorted and filtered, and can also be exported to MS Excel for additional manipulation

The Calculations component warehouses calculations and allows business processes to interface with them via web services.

Key Features:

• Calculations are defined in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, allowing for direct configuration from the business user
• Data from any other component or combination of components can be passed into calculations via configurable mapping instructions
• Testing features accelerate the development process

The Decision component is designed to allow a user to configure a set of "business decisions" through a user interface.

Key Features:

• These decisions are stored in a database where they can be dynamically accessed at runtime as well as modified without the need for any code changes
• Decisions are defined as a set of "input" conditions with resulting "output" decisions
• Associated tables can be maintained in the system and exported/imported from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets

The BizTalk Integration component helps facilitate the integration between FAST components and the Microsoft BizTalk ESB platform.

Key Features:

• Generated "adapters" are tailored to communicate between FAST components and other software systems used in an enterprise, enabling the automation of business processes.

The Unit Test component allows for automated testing to be performed for all FAST 8x generated applications via an independent application.

Key Features:

• JUnit or MSTest scripts are automatically generated for every component
• Test data is configured for each component
• This component controls the execution of testing, running all methods using the configured test data, and storing the results
• Supports the comparison of actual outcomes to predicted outcomes and highlights differences

The Workflow component facilitates the tracking and management of workflow tasks assigned to individuals and/or groups of users for tasks that must be completed as part of a set of business processes.

Key Features:

• Tasks are automatically created by system events or manually by users
• Tasks as assigned to queues, which represent a single user, team, or department
• Task assignment history is tracked
• Assignment algorithms (e.g. round-robin, load-balanced, etc) can be configured for assigning tasks
• Escalation features
• Can mark users as "out of office" to limit task assignment

The User Security component allows you to define user roles and specific users, and to define what access they have to data and functionality in other components.

Key Features:

• Data access can be controlled at several levels - viewable, readable, updateable – for tables, fields, pages, buttons, menu options, and more
• User roles control security, and users are assigned to one or more roles
• Data can be secured based on values (e.g. certain user roles can only view annuity policies but not life policies)
• System menu options, buttons and other features are also controlled in User Security
• Integration with external security directories such as Active Directory (for single sign-on, centralization of security controls, etc)

The Correspondence component is an open platform which receives requests for policy- and producer-related output from other components and manages those requests.

Key Features:

• Configuring output such as confirmations, statements, transmittals, letters, and other forms of output
• Integration with a third-party package that will render the desired documents
• Management of output attributes, such as how the medium and the roles who receive copies
• Facility for viewing generated output
• Reprint requests

The Scheduled Events component allows you to configure recurring events on the system and associate them with another component, similar to the recurring meeting function available in MS Outlook.

Key Features:

• Captures standard scheduling information such as mode/frequency, special dates to execute, and effective date information
• Each event has an associated orchestration defined that will execute when the event is due to be executed
• This component is used in conjunction with other components and helps define the processing characteristics of those components

The Business Process Log component is a process mining component. The component allows for the capture and analysis of business process metrics based on an event log that tracks the results and efficiency of such processes.

Key Features:

• The end user is able to extract knowledge from events logged by all FAST components.

The Diagnostics component is configured to store informational, performance, timing, trace and error tracking data.

Key Features:

• All FAST components automatically include logging capabilities captured in Diagnostics
• The Diagnostics component provides the ability to configure the level of detail captured in logging and to view the resulting information

The Invoice component allows its users to record time spent on tasks.

Key Features:

• Users submit their "timesheets" based on the hours spent, tasks performed, and the project it was performed for
• These hours are then submitted to management, who can approve or deny the hours and assign/track "billing rates" based on worker skill

The Imaging component helps to integrate an insurance application with a third-party imaging solution.

Key Features:

• Maintains a link between entity details within the application and image indexing data in the imaging solution
• Access to image folders from within the application
• Image viewing
• Event processing as new images are added to a folder

The Message component is designed to facilitate the exchange of text-based messages between constituents who are collaborating on a business process.

Key Features:

• The message component is typically associated with other components where users wish to interact to complete a process (and exchange text information about the business being processed), and where a historical record of this communication is desired.

More than 80 business processes from new business through claims.

• Client-centric navigation
• Innovative Web 2.0 user experience
• Next-generation insurance product configuration
• User collaboration through wikis and messages
• On-line reporting
• Real-time or scheduled processing
• Bulk transaction and cash management
• Role-based common front end (across different components)
• Flexible, limitless product structure

End-to-end business processes from recruiting through commission payments with links to all core systems.

• Web-based agent recruitment and on-boarding
• Automated compliance and background checks
• Support for complex hierarchies and reporting structures
• Configurable commission structures
• Sales incentive and special compensation programs
• On-line productivity dashboards
• Production and sales effectiveness reporting
• Producer access to on-line account details and commission payment information / statements
• ACORD vendor integration

Allow home office, distribution, and customers to share the same real-time information.

• Out-of-the-box insurance views, components and processes
• Real-time data access
• Seamlessly combine data from multiple sources
• Advanced and flexible user interface
• Externalized resource-based graphics, text, and localization
• Role based authorization and navigation
• Easy and dynamic branding
• Fast / flexible customization
• Mash-ups / Integration with 3rd party web sites

Configurable workflows and business processes for knowledge-workers in new business, underwriting, claims, campaigns, service support, and more.

• Automatic and manual creation of requirements and tasks based on templates
• Quick access to all communication related to a case
• Template library expanded by users as more business scenarios are encountered
• Integration with workflow for task management and escalation
• Case management can be used in a variety of business processes:
  • New Business – IGO and vendor requirements are generated and managed
  • Underwriting – vendor integration via ACORD; decision rules and management
  • Claims – full requirements management; handling multiple claims/beneficiaries
  • Campaigns – build sales and recruiting campaigns
  • Service support – attach QC and/or approval steps to any business process
• On-line metrics and productivity dashboards