Policy descendants in Cloud API

A policy descendant is an entity that has the Policy entity as an ancestor, either directly or indirectly. Policy descendants comprise to contents of the policy used by ClaimCenter to process the claim.

The following table identifies common policy descendants. Note that the complete list of policy descendants can vary based on the policy's line of business.

Descendant Definition Example from Personal Auto
Risk unit A thing that is covered by the policy VehicleRU
Coverage A specific type of covered loss attached to a risk unit or to the policy itself Collision coverage (for a specific VehicleRU)
Endorsement A reference to a form that defines a portion of the legal contract of the policy. A reference to a "Custom Equipment" exclusion, which excludes coverage for damage done to "aftermarket equipment and modifications"
Policy location An account location associated with a policy The location where a vehicle is garaged

Policy system ids

In the base configuration, the data model entities for each policy descendant include a PolicySystemId field. In Cloud API, every policy descendant resource has a policySystemId property that maps to this field. This allows calls to reference a policy descendant by the policySystemId field (in addition to the id and refid fields).

Verified and unverified policy endpoints

A verified policy is a policy that is based on information retrieved from the PAS. In a production system, verified policies are the most common types of policies.

An unverified policy is a policy that is created during the FNOL process based on information supplied by an adjuster or by the caller application. This information may or may not correctly correspond to information in a PAS. Unverified policies let adjusters start the FNOL process without information from the PAS. This could be necessary if the reporter does not know or cannot recall enough information to find the policy.

For every type of policy descendant, Cloud API provides two endpoints: one for verified policies and one for unverified policies.

For a verified policy:

  • The policy descendant endpoints start with /claim/v1/claims/{claimId}/policy.
  • The only supported method is GET. (You can edit information on a verified policy, but this converts the policy to an unverified policy. As of this release, Cloud API does not support this type of action.)

For an unverified policy:

  • The policy descendant endpoints start with /claim/v1/unverified-policy.
  • The GET, POST, and PATCH operations are supported. (As of this release, Cloud API does not support the DELETE method for unverified policy descendants.)

For example, the following are the endpoints for vehicle risk units:

  • Verified policies
    • GET /claim/v1/claims/{claimId}/policy/vehicle-risk-units
    • GET /claim/v1/claims/{claimId}/policy/vehicle-risk-units/{vehicleRiskUnitId}
  • Unverified policies
    • GET /claim/v1/unverified-policies/{policyId}/vehicle-risk-units
    • GET /claim/v1/unverified-policies/{policyId}/vehicle-risk-units/{vehicleRiskUnitId}
    • POST /claim/v1/unverified-policies/{policyId}/vehicle-risk-units
    • PATCH /claim/v1/unverified-policies/{policyId}/vehicle-risk-units/{vehicleRiskUnitId}

Limitations on generating endpoints for policy descendants

Nearly every type of policy descendant in the base configuration has a corresponding set of endpoints. However, as is the case with any base configuration entity, the REST endpoint generator will not generate endpoints for base configuration policy descendants.