Guidelines: a production rule based implementation of mortgage insurance underwriting policy

Guidelines, a business critical COBOL program used to disseminate underwriting policy on a nationwide basis, has been re-engineered using rule based expert system technology in a short period of time. One of the key goals of the project was to enable direct participation by non systems professionals in the maintenance of the guideline rules. Thus it was necessary that the rules be simple. Several techniques were used to achieve this and `hide´ some of the actual complexity. Early experience is demonstrating the value of access to and control of the underwriting guidelines directly by the policy authors. Furthermore, the new system makes it practical to tailor the guidelines for specific regional, branch, and lender situations and to incorporate multiple risk models. It is anticipated that this implementation will lead to enhanced underwriter productivity and result in substantial reductions in the time and cost of overall maintenance