CLIEDIS Initiatives

The initiatives that CLIEDIS undertakes are based on current industry priorities to advance data exchange within the industry.

²⁰²⁴ Business Capability Model

CLIEDIS has built a Business Capability Model representing the life insurance industry with an emphasis on where exchange of information is necessary between distributors and carriers and other trading partners. It positions CLIEDIS to guide the industry in digital transformation.

A business capability model encapsulates what a business is doing right now and what needs to be done to meet current and future challenges.

The CLIEDIS Business Capability Model looks at the life insurance industry holistically, shifts the focus to a distributor’s environment, and then deep dives into the areas where exchange of information is needed or warranted. It defines and categorizes over 200 business capabilities in this space. This effort, aligned with the Service Catalog and CITS data feeds, will help our members understand where each service or data feed fits in the overall industry framework, the impact implementations can have, and can help build the business case for implementation.

The current version of the CLIEDIS Business Capability Model & Service Catalog, including both a visual chart and detailed spreadsheet, is available in the CLIEDIS Resource Center in the folder Technical Resources / CLIEDIS Capability Model.
²⁰²⁴ Service Catalog

With over 130 services defined, the CLIEDIS Service Catalog acts as a roadmap for implementing services to support the distribution market. By connecting each service to the Business Capabilities, the purpose of a particular service becomes clear and the business case to implement is easier to make.

CITS APIs will serve as a method to fulfill our members’ data exchange needs identified in the service catalog, filling in data gaps and expanding the communication capabilities of a distributor.

The current version of the CLIEDIS Business Capability Model & Service Catalog, including both a visual chart and detailed spreadsheet, is available in the CLIEDIS Resource Center in the folder Technical Resources / CLIEDIS Capability Model.
²⁰²⁴ CLIEDIS API Architecture-Standard Design Principles

As part of the standards setting process for APIs, we are developing common design principles to support standards CITS APIs.

These principles address the technology, security requirements, data structures, and usage patterns needed to ensure successful implementation of all the services in our Service Catalog that will be delivered as a CITS API.

These principles ensure a common, repeatable approach will be applied across all CITS APIs.

Status:

We have developed a draft set of API Design principles. In 2023, these principles have been updated based on requirements identified by the CLIEDIS API Architecture group.

We have separately completed a proof of concept assessing the design and security principles holistically and in response to supporting a Policy Values API.

The design principles are available in the CLIEDIS Resource Center in the folder Technical Resources / APIs / API Architecture.
²⁰²⁴ CLIEDIS API Effort

CLIEDIS members have submitted a variety of data exchange needs that move beyond today’s CITS XML feeds. These needs have been published as a Service Catalog.

The Service Catalog acts as a roadmap for implementing services to support the distribution market. By connecting each service to the Business Capabilities, the purpose of a particular service becomes clear and the business case to implement is easier to make.

CITS APIs will serve as a method to fulfill our members’ data exchange needs identified in the service catalog, filling in data gaps and expanding the communication capabilities of a distributor.

The focus of our work is on what is being exposed externally and how to expose it.

Our API services identify additional pieces of information and functionality that distributors want beyond what is already provided via a feed and is better delivered in a connected environment. The Service Catalog defines the overall scope of our effort and will be used to validate member priorities. Whether and when APIs can ultimately replace feeds will be decided separately.

While the service catalog defines ‘what’ needs to be exposed externally, our CITS API Design Principles address ‘how’ to expose it. These standard principles will be applied to ALL CITS APIs. It addresses the technology, security requirements, data structures, and usage patterns needed to ensure successful implementation of all the services in our catalog that will be delivered as a CITS API. These principles ensure a common, repeatable approach will be applied across all CITS APIs.

Design Goal

One of the biggest criticisms of the CITS XML data feeds is that no feed is 100%. All receive passing grades and can be consumed successfully, but each has different data points missing, products not included. This is due to the back-office system data availability and differences in data capture coupled with the overall scope of a data feed requiring data from multiple systems across business processes. While the differences are small in scope, they are big on impact. Distributors must incorporate different procedures for each carrier and sometimes each product solely because of these differences. Our goal is to eliminate this issue through APIs.

A goal of ‘100%’ compliance of an API call will impact the scope of each API service that is defined. Each API will be scoped with focused data designed to satisfy a single service in support of a business capability. If additional data is needed for another purpose, it will result in a different service, not just added to one already in place.

As part of scoping the APIs, the ‘cost to query’ will also need to be considered. We want to ensure that the scope of an API doesn’t require costly internal calls across systems to deliver results, as this will be an inhibitor to implementation and a barrier to achieving 100% compliance.
²⁰²⁴ Implementation of 3 primary CITS feeds
CLIEDIS remains focused on supporting distributors by getting them the information needed to manage their book of business. We work with the carriers to get these feeds implemented correctly and as complete as possible. Simultaneously we work with the distributors on their adoption via FAWG.

CLIEDIS has three feeds that correlate with one another to ensure that a complete snapshot of the distributors’ business is available to them. These include:
- Application Notification
The Application Notification feed provides a distributor with a timely notification of an application submission so they are in a position to manage the case properly through the new business process. It can support both paper and electronic applications.
- Pending
The Pending feed is used after the application is received in order to update case status and update information regarding outstanding requirements.
- Book of Business
The Book of Business feed defines the data needed to set up and track a policy throughout its life and takes into account the tracking of critical events including the status of the policy, changes in servicing agents, and notifications of business transferring in or out of a distributor’s office so that the record is maintained correctly.

Our prioritization focus has resulted in significant adoption of these feeds, both by carriers delivering on them and distributors utilizing the information they receive. We continue to push for the remaining carriers and feeds to be implemented and for distributors to maximize the benefits they can receive from utilizing the data provided. See the Implementation Progress report on our website for information on what carriers’ feeds are available.

The guides and supporting documentation for implementing these feeds are available in the CLIEDIS Resource Center in the folder Technical Documents / CITS.
²⁰²⁴ Feed Adoption Working Group (FAWG)

The Feed Adoption Working Group (FAWG) focuses on how to improve adoption and impact of feeds by distributors. It is comprised of CLIEDIS distributor members and their trading partners. The participants actively work together with their agency vendors to identify critical data points, requirements, priorities for the industry and considers the processes distributors need to put in place to ensure success.

As a result of FAWG we have implemented the Knowledge Base and Issue Tracking system. CITS guide enhancements and documentation targeting the distributor have also resulted from this initiative.

In 2023 we will be emphasizing the business capability model and API catalog work to prioritize and drive implementations forward so that the gaps in information and functionality distributors continue to experience can be filled.

Contact Support if you want to participate.
²⁰²⁴ Data Security Initiative

Security for electronic data feeds is front and centre for many CLIEDIS member carriers. Tighter compliance regulations and the desire to provide inforce feeds and application images has brought new issues to light that were less of a concern when only pending feeds were being sent.

In May 2016, CLIEDIS completed efforts to create a single set of data security requirements that can be applied to protect all confidential data received by industry trading partners and is not limited to CITS data feeds. CLIEDIS worked closely with carriers and distributors to develop requirements that are clearly understood and achievable and that can be used to protect any confidential data.

Carriers are now utilizing these security documents with their trading partners. We periodically review these to determine if any requirements have changed as a result of new legislation, regulatory requirements, or changed security needs.

The work here is considered complete from a feed perspective. We will revisit these requirements as part of the API Architecture work to determine if any additional requirements or changes are needed.

These documents can be found in the CLIEDIS Resource Center in the folder Technical Documents / Data Security
²⁰²⁴ Product Code Inventory

The need to maintain a complete and accurate list of product codes used in CITS feeds is something every agency management system vendor must do and struggles with. Carriers have challenges in providing us with the information needed so that vendors can keep a library of codes that are in use. Yet the systems need accurate codes to be able to load and process business.

This initiative focuses on gathering product codes from carriers as necessary and maintaining them in a standardized format.

The current list of product codes is maintained in the Resource Center. See Technical Resources / CITS / CITS Implementation – Common Documents

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Status:

We have a published product code inventory available in the resource center tracking the product code lists provided to us from carriers for both new business (used in the Application Notification and Pending Feeds) and inforce (used in the Book of Business feeds). We continue to struggle in keeping this current, as the information is only as good as what is provided. We are open to ideas on how to make this a stronger resource.

Contact Support if you want to participate in this effort.