WebHUMan
Hannover Re’s Life Underwriting Manual
Published by
Hannover Rück SE
Life and health business group
WebHUMan provides underwriters with a comprehensive
online source of life risk assessment
Karl-Wiechert-Allee 50
30625 Hannover
Germany
Information as of May 2013.
www.hannover-re.com
WebHUMan
Hannover Re at a glance
Hannover Re is one of the leading reinsurance groups i­n the
world. Its headquarter is located in Hannover, ­Germany.
As a globally operating reinsurance group, Hannover Re transacts all lines of non-life and life and health reinsurance and has
a network of subsidiaries, branches and representative offices
on all five continents with a total staff of roughly 2,300.
Hannover Re seeks to maintain a rating from the rating agencies most relevant to our industry that facilitates and ensures
access to all desirable business worldwide. Currently, this
means ensuring AA– from Standard & Poor’s and A+ from
A.M. Best.
Since 1990, life and health reinsurance is a strategic growth
segment and has advanced to become a leading provider of
reinsurance concepts and solutions.
As a customer-oriented life and health reinsurer Hannover Re
structures and manages its relations with the aid of systematic
customer relationship management. We work with customers
on a long-term partnership basis in order to open up profit
potentials for both parties.
WebHUMan –
our underwriting principles
As a major international reassurer of life and disability business, in particular, we attach great importance to sound yet
competitive under­­writing principles and evidence-based
under­writ­ing decisions. It is our belief that the underwrit­
ing process must be allied to detailed training and guidance for underwriters. In close cooperation with our clients
we have developed exclusive sys­tems geared towards offering state-of-the-art sup­port within the underwriting process.
Market-proven: our web-based under­
writing manual called WebHUMan
­(Hannover Re Life Underwriting Manual)
The advantages of an online underwriting manual are manifold: the increase in efficiency alone is a key driver in creating a competitive edge. A dynamic central database allows for
quick and easy online updates of the most recent de­vel­opments
in medical and financial data. Adapta­tions for specific markets
and regions as well as additional languages are easily implemented. All underwriting decisions are evidence-based and
can be stored in internal workflow systems and databases via
XML1 and PDF export.
WebHUMan – the highlights
Medical, occupational and avocational risks can be assessed
with WebHUMan, thus covering the bulk of life in­surance business. Therefore, WebHUMan is designed to e
­ ncompass the
complete spectrum of underwriting considerations for life, disability, critical illness, accidental death benefit and income
replacement risks.
Underwriting
Pentagon
Financial
risks
WebHUMan provides underwriters with a comprehensive
source of risk assessment; further­more, it is conceived as a
workflow tool that guides the underwriter through the underwriting process.
The entire application process can be man­aged within the tool:
all diagnoses, medical re­ports, laboratory reports etc. are taken
into ac­count. Recommendations are made as to whether further documentation should be requested or greater attention
paid to detail in order to fully assess a particular risk. The bulk
of insurance ap­­plications can be handled and prepared by a
jun­ior underwriter, hence enabling the senior under­writer to
concentrate on the more complex risks.
Great effort has been made towards intuitive usage, as reflected
in the design of the user interface, the logical navigation structures and user-friendly functionality. The filter function, for
instance, is adjustable according to the level of detail and complexity required by the under­writer.
Medical
risks
Occupational
risks
Do we want
this risk?
Avocational
risks
Geographical
risks
A further highlight of WebHUMan is its sophisticated categorisation capabilities: it takes into account combin­ations of
diseases and im­pairments – all ICD-10-coded – in conjunction
with many other variable parameters such as avocational or
occupational risks.
Most notably, the sections covering dia­betes mellitus, ischaemic heart disease and ma­lignant tumours have been structured
in order to simplify the complex proced­ures for assessing the
main diseases in combination with any associ­at­ed risk factor.
Key features:
Key benefits:
• Ratings
for life, critical illness, TPD, ADB, income
replacement
• Five
databases: Medicine, Laboratory, Drugs, Sports
and Occupation
• Three
calculators: BMI, Blood pressure and Lipids
•A
pproximately 80% of cases require no further delegation – ratings are final
•U
ser-oriented structure and functionality
•C
onsistent design and navigation architecture:
highly intuitive usability
•C
entralised updates and site management: consistent and up-to-date information
•W
orkflow tool
•O
ver 10,000 diseases
•O
ver 20,000 synonyms
Languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian,
Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish
The system does not require complicated installation routines
or maintenance, access is quick and intuitive. Our clients are
thus pro­vid­ed with the most current and consist­ent data at
their fingertips.
1
The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup languages.
Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of structured data across different information systems, particularly via the Internet,
and it is used both to encode documents and to serialise data.
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An illustrative case
Avocational and occupational risks
John Smith, an underwriter and passionate parachuter, is
applying for accidental death bene­fit and life insurance. John
has diabetes.
Intelligent search function:
•d
iseases are structured according to ICD main
groups, subgroups and synonyms
•h
itlist ranked according to the items most frequently
searched
• s tring and wildcard search, alter­native words, abbreviations, word elem­ents or letters, symbols, with or
without accents and umlauts
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Medical risks
Our service
Our international team of experts (doctors, underwriters and
actuaries) is committed to con­­tinuously revising the manual
and adapting rat­ings according to the most recent developments in mortality and morbidity experience and the cor­
relation with a particular impairment, activity or occupation.
Extensive research and investigation is under­­taken to ensure
that the latest developments in medical research, product
design and competitive trends within all types of life insur­
ance and all pertinent markets are taken into ac­count.
Regular cooperation and feedback from long-standing clients
ensure that the system meets the needs of its users.
We have designated a staff member at each of our locations
worldwide who is ready to train underwriters within our cedant companies or pro­spective client companies on the system.
Naturally, the system is not intended to re­place our personal
service and advice. Hannover Re representatives are always
pleased to pro­vide substantiated opinions on any unusual or
com­plex individual risk.
System requirements:
Key functionalities:
• Internet
Explorer 8.0 or higher
•F
irefox 3.6 or higher
•G
oogle Chrome 13
•A
crobat Reader
•S
creen resolution optimised for 1,024 x 768 pixels
• Excellent
search functionality (look and feel of wellknown search engines)
•W
ildcard search
•E
mail notification service
• “ Latest news” section, i.e. database updates or technical adjustments
•W
eb services: easy integration of ratings into IT
landscape
•E
xport to PDF, internal workflow and case administration
Workflow and rating
The entire documentation and the resulting ratings
can be saved, exported and integrated into internal
workflow systems. The underwriter’s de­ci­sion-making
process is thus always docu­ment­ed and sus­tain­able.
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