We get this request from a lot of clients in US insurance industry who want to generate ACORD forms automatically, means they want data of corresponding insurance Policy and other objects filled automatically in the editable ACORD PDF. Most of the clients have their data in a CRM system like Salesforce, and some clients have this data in a database. What users ideally want is to select an ACORD form number and click a button corresponding to a Policy, Vehicle, Account or some other related object, which should trigger the code that retrieves the data to fill and auto populates in the selected ACORD form. The output PDF form can be downloaded on user’s local machine, attached to the corresponding policy or kept over the cloud (in CRM, S3 or any other location).
Since the requirement is to write generic code to autofill any ACORD form, that makes the problem challenging. Each ACORD form contains different number and type of fields (like checkboxes, radio buttons, textboxes, dropdowns, textarea etc). Some field values come from the Policy itself (like Policy number) and others come from related objects (like Vehicle, Driver, Carrier or Producer information).
A good way to solve this problem is by creating ACORD form fields to CRM/DATABASE field mapping. Each PDF form field has a unique internal name which can be retrieved with a piece of code written in PHP, Java, C# (or other languages). This internal field name and its type (checkbox, radio button, textbox, dropdown, textarea etc) can be retrieved and it can be stored with corresponding data object’s name (like policy object in Salesforce or policy table in database) and target object field name from which to read value (like insured_name). A UI can be created to map any form in this way. ACORD form fields and data objects with their fields can be displayed on screen for field to field mapping. Once fields are mapped this mapping can be used to auto populate the mapped forms. Common fields need to be mapped only once. A button can be placed on the Policy object with label “Generate ACORD Form” clicking which will ask for the form number selection, after which data for the currently open policy can be fetched (along with its related objects) and form mapping will be used to put the data in the PDF, which can then be stored.
Above mechanism is used a lot but more recently ACORD XML mechanism is also under use in which ACORD XML structure is created using the policy data and this ACORD XML is sent to an ACORD webservice with form number. ACORD webservice populates the ACORD form and returns it back. This is easier but ACORD charges per transaction based on the latest information available.
If you need ACORD forms auto-generated or any other Agency Management Feature to be developed write to us today at dev@webners.com