A Guide to Policy Admin Systems: Build, Customize, or Integrate?

For insurance carriers and agencies, a policy administration system is the most essential piece of their tech stack. Whether you’re an insurtech startup researching your first policy admin system, or an established player looking to upgrade, this guide will cover the most current options on the market.

What Is a Policy Admin System?

A policy administration system (PAS) is the system of record for every transaction related to an insurance policy. The policy admin system supports all operations that can be taken on a policy or quote, such as rating, quoting, underwriting, document generation, document storage, billing, endorsements, cancellations, invoicing, and more.

Whenever anything happens with a policy, the PAS records the transaction and takes any necessary action. This includes things like generating a quote based on information provided in an online form, modifying the policy’s coverage endorsements, or generating the appropriate documents for a new policy and facilitating delivery to the policyholder.

The PAS is the technical underpinning for all-online insurance transactions - and so a robust PAS is essential to offering the convenient digital insurance experience that modern customers expect.

If your business needs a new PAS, you have a few different options: you could build one yourself, buy a third-party PAS and the custom development work needed to use it with your offerings, or partner with an insurance-as-a-service company and integrate with their PAS.