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Converting an insurance policy to a different product type or administrative system is often seen as a costly, complex, and time-consuming process — frequently still performed manually. In the case of conversions resulting from portfolio acquisitions, there’s often limited visibility into progress during the transition. A systematic approach, supported by a clearly defined methodology, can significantly improve these processes.

Policy conversions are necessary when an insurance product needs to be transformed into another format. This can be for a variety of reasons — such as enriching and standardizing an existing policy (for example using the SIVI AFD model, known as rationalization), converting from a provincial to a mandated policy (porting), or switching to an entirely new product (refinancing). In today’s landscape, conversions have become a routine task within many organizations.

In the case of an acquired portfolio, it becomes even more critical to transfer the policies into the safe haven of the acquiring organization’s system. In other words, migrating the policies into the in-house policy administration platform as quickly as possible ensures immediate visibility into the investment, while enabling monitoring of customer behavior and portfolio performance.

Approaches to policy conversions vary widely from one organization to another — from manual transfers to hybrid models combining people and technology. The organizational impact is often significant, and overloaded schedules across departments can suffer under the pressure of such a project. As a result, many organizations adopt an ad-hoc approach, lacking proper planning, defined conversion rules, agreements, or quality assurance. Knowledge gained during the process often goes undocumented, making every new conversion a challenge. Many are also unaware of the potential that software (beyond Excel) can offer during a conversion or lack the necessary technical expertise in-house. Poorly executed conversions can lead to higher churn, increased customer service pressure, and ultimately, reduced profitability.

A systematic and methodical approach with the right mix of project team members brings clarity, control, and speed to conversion projects. Systematic means working with a well-structured roadmap of interrelated steps executed in a logical sequence. Methodical means relying on experience, best practices, and the right technical tools. Assembling a small team of internal and external cross-functional experts is the first step. This team ensures a fast and effective conversion using a proven playbook.

Following a fixed roadmap, the process runs through several key phases, including an initial portfolio analysis, product setup (mapping and translation), data enrichment, assumption definition, portfolio simulations using real premiums and acceptance criteria, the actual conversion, and error handling. This is where expertise and technology work hand in hand.

Technology and data enrichment are key success factors. Technology brings structure through the creation of a conversion database — the initial staging area for the portfolio. Here it undergoes rules-based processing, cleansing, standardization, enrichment, mapping, translation, and analytics. The conversion knowledge is captured and continuously improved within this system, and the database serves as a flexible foundation for applying emerging technologies like OpenAI, known for ChatGPT.

The second crucial factor is data enrichment. By leveraging numerous known and unknown data sources, we can enhance the dataset substantially. Self-service customer portals can also help fill in missing information, validate assumptions with the customer directly, and accelerate results through smarter workflows.

Finally, the conversion software processes and exports the final data into the target systems, such as ANVA, Level7, Dias, Axon, and others. The software includes a comprehensive set of logic that compiles the policy data accurately, ensuring flawless policy renewal, minimal failure rates, and correct financial administration.

Thanks to this systematic and methodical approach, millions of policies have already been successfully converted for intermediaries, authorized agents, service providers, and insurers.