The insurance industry has its own unique pressures in addressing the diverse needs of customers, shareholders and regulators. This document does not address the subject of the wider business challenges for UK insurers but instead focuses on specific issues in relation to the document management and creation processes and reflects on how these disciplines impact on some of the wider business issues particularly around risk management and compliance.

At the centre of document related processes in any organisation is the core function of “How to produce the statutory documents that all business must have and send to their clients”. In most companies the ‘money related’ documents are produced directly out of the core business driving IT systems. This task is often called various things. Commonly used names include document generation, document composition, report production, word processing / mail merge and document management. Essentially they are all the process through which data (information about the recipient) and communications content are intelligently put together to automatically produce a business document.

Common documents produced in by insurers include quotations, policies, statements, reporting, renewals, wordings, reminders, cheques and remittance advices, and statutory letters. Typically the underwriting, broking and claims processing systems generate these documents and use an output generation tools supplied with those systems. Where there exist multiple lines of business systems, you will often find multiple ways of creating documents.