Altus

Across Europe regulators have been gradually increasing the level of disclosure required when selling financial products to consumers. These disclosure requirements vary from basic formatting requirements, through product (and product-option) specific text, to policy-specific calculated values – in particular for costs.

These disclosures mean that detailed product rules and calculations now have to exist beyond policy administration systems. Naïve implementations duplicate this information, slowing down the launch of new products and inevitably leading to inconsistencies, with the resulting problems during the policy lifetime.

Altus have used a variety of techniques with our clients to ensure that changing disclosure requirements can be complied with cost effectively, and that systems support time-to-market aspirations for new products and features.

• Ensuring that disclosure requirements are considered in new product developments, via an explicit Business Constraints Framework.
• Designing architecture that supports re-use of product rules and calculations across systems that require them.
• Making terms of business data available to support accurate disclosure of charges etc for the particular channel and broker.
• Ensuring document production systems use the maximum possible commonality (e.g. between pre-sales illustrations and post-sale illustrations).

By following our systematic, step-wise approach to business architecture, Altus can help you ensure that disclosure doesn’t become a drag on your business.