Integration of a Business Rules Engine to Manage Frequently Changing Workflow: A Case Study of Insurance Underwriting Workflow

The purpose of this paper is to describe the challenges faced with the initial introduction and use of workflow for underwriting in an insurance company and how these challenges were overcome when the company was faced with the requirement to upgrade the system. Early workflow systems, including one of the original FileNet WorkfloTM system, offered the promise of easy to change, work assignment and routing that could be managed by the business area. In the first implementation of workflow, the system did not provide the agility to easily change the system when the business requirements changed. When an opportunity was provided to update a legacy FileNet Image and WorkfloTM system, the business management and IT decided to ensure that users were empowered to make their own changes in work assignment, reassignment and routing rules in the future by introducing a business rules engine to manage the workflow process. The case study details the approach used to implement a rule driven workflow system capable of “exception based underwriting” and provides lessons learned.