The Centre for Study of Insurance Operations (CSIO) has announced that its Commercial Lines (CL) Working Group has established requirements to underwrite and rate multi-operations small business.

The CL Working Group completed business and technical sessions to define the standard requirements for implementing multi-operations. These requirements allow brokers to pass multiple Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) codes for the same quote request, effectively extending the scope of what insurers can automate in the quoting process.

Enabling brokers to submit multi-operations quote requests helps support workflow efficiencies between brokers and insurers, CSIO said, by improving the speed of information exchange while strengthening the value proposition of the broker channel.

“The Working Group’s success in first streamlining the questions to underwrite and rate three small business segments - contractors, retail and, business and professional services - laid the foundation to move ahead and finalize the requirements for multi-operations small business,” said CSIO VP of operations & strategy Kathryn Sinclair. “These achievements were all made possible by the collaboration between Working Group members to achieve consensus.”

Sinclair noted that since CSIO created the CL Working Group vendors, insurers and broker stakeholders have made “significant progress” in advancing the group’s data standards in the broker channel.