Product owner Jaap Carlier knows all the ins and outs of ANVA Backoffice. To start the unambiguous registration of insurance products in the proxy chain, Jaap and his development team implemented the product definitions defined by SIVI in ANVA's software solution.
More than two-thirds of the Managing General Agents are customers of ANVA. The fact that we are involved in this project as a frontrunner makes me proud and at the same time offers the opportunity to involve the largest part of the market in this project," says Jaap Carlier. That this describes the biggest challenge of this extensive project, he realizes only too well.
As a product owner, then, after receiving the first AFD definition, he started working out in concept uniform ANVA product screens. "Somewhere we had to bridge the gap between the standard AFD definitions and different product layouts of our customers. We came up with a mechanism to use the right definitions at the AFD level, link them to customer data where possible, and filter for what may or may not be used within a product. That may seem so "easy to say," but remember that all of our customers' fixtures have unique characteristics. That we had to link and integrate these screens with the current administration that customers work in was quite a risk."
The first concept, even before the technical construction started, was presented to a number of customers and was received positively. Jaap: "We wanted to test whether it could become a workable solution. The desire to retain the freedom to define own data in addition to the AFD product definitions proved very important to our customers. However, the basis in the product screens should be fixed and fortunately came back in our first concept. I certainly think it helps that many proxies realize that otherwise we cannot achieve data quality in the proxy chain."
After receiving feedback, ANVA's development team worked hard to make the design a reality. Building conversion software to convert existing products to uniformity as easily as possible was also a nice brain teaser. "We had to program it so that nothing changed for consumers. They want to remain insured for what is on their policy schedule and are not waiting for a change in coverage and premium, for example. By developing a phase-out mechanism, the proxies can indicate in how much time they want to phase out any resulting premium difference," Jaap explains.
The automatic distribution of product definitions is one of the changes included in the latest release (available since May). For Jaap, this pretty much completes his task as product owner regarding the UIV project. "We will of course continue to build the product screens, but that will be picked up by ANVA's content department. Our internal cooperation is very strong. Should we receive any wishes or points of interest from customers that we can play a role in, we take that up together." That this unification process brings benefits to the entire proxy chain, he says, is not in dispute. "Moreover, it is also a nice step for Managing General Agents toward our future-proof ANVA Rules." Jaap looks back on a challenging job where he worked hard together with the ANVA development team to create something beautiful.
