Policy Administration

This is another departmental description that may involve overlap with other
sections or departments mentioned above or below. The general areas of concern here
may be:
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(a) General or Life insurance? : this is a most important question, since the policy
document with each has a very different significance. With general insurance,
technically there need not be a policy (although there almost invariably is) and it is
seldom necessary to produce the original policy document when making a claim.
With life insurance, however, the contract is non-cancellable by the insurer, and
the policy documents are required to be produced at the time of a claim.
(b) Life insurance policies: as mentioned above, these must be produced when a
claim is made. A mistake in a life policy is potentially much more serious than
with General Business, especially since the policy may be assigned to another
person and/or used as collateral with a loan and any assignees are expected to be
relying on the veracity of the policy.
(c) New business procedures: especially with Life business (as noted) the process of
verification and checking, both for factual accuracy and errors in document
preparation, is very important. With any class of business, it is important that the
policy should be prepared and issued as efficiently and as impressively as
possible, for reasons that are obvious.
(d) Other procedures: this topic embraces such matters as error handling, policy
correction, endorsement preparation and renewal procedures. With life insurance,
once more, the great importance of the actual payment of the first premium must
be considered. In other classes, the contract may commence without the receipt of
a premium (often a non-marine policy requires that the insured ‘has paid or agreed
to pay the premium’). With life insurance, the usual practice is that the existence
of the contract depends upon the first premium being received.