1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to systems and methods for calculating product rates, and particularly to systems and methods for calculating insurance product rates using computer systems in a client/server environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
As more users begin to take advantage of businesses which use the Internet and the World Wide Web (the “web”) to describe, market, sell, and deliver products and services, the performance of business web sites (e.g., web server applications running on server computer systems) becomes an issue of greater importance.
Depending on the type of product or service that is the subject of web-based electronic commerce, the challenges to providing rapid or even real-time responses to consumers can be great. For example, in providing insurance product information via the web, a website should efficiently gather consumer information and process that information to provide insurance product rate quotes. In general, an insurance product rate is the cost of a given unit of insurance. For example, in ordinary life insurance, the rate is the price of $1,000 of the face amount of the policy. The process of calculating an insurance rate (i.e., the rating process) can be very complicated and can require evaluating mathematical expressions that depend on consumer information, rating factors from look-up tables, and other relevant information. Compounding the difficulty inherent in this process is the desire to be able to calculate rates for a variety of different insurance products (e.g., automobile insurance, health insurance, life insurance, home insurance, renter's insurance) offered by a variety of different providers or insurance carriers. Thus, any one product from a particular carrier might require a rate calculation that is unique to that product/carrier combination.
In order to quickly calculate insurance product rates, the necessary mathematical expressions and data are typically encoded into the programming for the insurance product application (e.g., the web server application or application running in conjunction with a web server) that gathers information from a consumer and returns rate quote information (and perhaps other types of information) to the consumer. However, as product rate information changes, or as the need to add new products and/or carriers arises, the process of modifying the insurance product application can become cumbersome and inefficient. Additionally, as general use of the insurance product application increases, product rate calculations can effect overall system performance, either by simply consuming valuable system resources, or by posing a threat to system availability (e.g., product rate calculation process memory leaks). In other situations, the variety of product rate calculations can necessitate using legacy computer systems (e.g., a mainframe based product rate calculation system from an insurance product carrier), or executing product rate calculations in an operating system environment that is less advantageous to the execution of the product application generally.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have a flexible insurance rating calculation system that is scaleable; is modifiable to include new or updated product rate information; allows for the addition of multiple products and/or carriers; allows for quick calculation of product rates so that they can be returned to a consumer requesting such a rate in a short amount of time, or even in real-time; and can be implemented in a variety of different computer system operating environments.