Insurance Program Launch Project Monitoring Checklist

Specify the lines of business (e.g., commercial property, GL, WC), target states, distribution channel (retail, wholesale/E&S, MGA), and target effective date. Scope drift after kickoff is the most common cause of SERFF timeline slippage.

Name the program underwriting lead, compliance/regulatory contact, IT lead for PolicyCenter or Duck Creek configuration, claims operations lead, distribution lead, and the executive sponsor. Capture the approval gates required from each (e.g., compliance sign-off on filed forms before bind authority).

Document the binding authority parameters — limits, hazard grades, eligible classes, premium thresholds, declination triggers — so producers and underwriting assistants are operating from one source of truth on day one of bind.

Walk the team through the SERFF filing calendar by state — prior-approval states need pre-effective-date approval; file-and-use states need the filing in before binding. Flag any state with known queue delays so the schedule reflects reality, not the optimistic case.

For each target state, record whether rate and form filings are prior-approval (PA), file-and-use (F&U), use-and-file (U&F), or no-file. PA states drive the critical path — pushing a rate live before approval is an unauthorized rate finding at the next market conduct exam.

NY, CA, FL, NJ, OH, NM, KY, LA, and MN require periodic Anti-Fraud Plan filings. If the program enters any of these states or restructures an existing program, the inherited plan often needs refiling under the new entity or program name.

File via the state DOI's portal (NY: DFS, CA: CDI, etc.). Track confirmation receipts in the program file — these are commonly requested during market conduct exams several years later.

If the program touches NY business, every new third party handling NPI — TPA, claims vendor, document destruction firm, print/mail — falls under §500.11. Treating vendor risk as IT-vendor-only is the most common scope miss; operational vendors require the same diligence.

Capture each identified risk with likelihood, severity, owner, and mitigation. Review weekly until launch; a stale register is the same as no register when the executive sponsor asks what could derail go-live.

Include SERFF filing fees, rating engine configuration, reinsurance treaty placement or facultative cover, ISO/Verisk data subscriptions, and producer onboarding/appointment costs. Reinsurance terms often gate the program economics — get the indication early.

Reserve developer, BA, and QA hours for policy admin (PolicyCenter, Duck Creek, or Insurity), the rating engine, and downstream feeds to AMS partners (Applied Epic, AMS360, EZLynx). Configuration changes that arrive after UAT starts are the most common driver of overrun.

Run a biweekly variance review. Flag any line item trending more than 10% over plan to the steering committee before it becomes a change-order conversation in front of the executive sponsor.

Rate accuracy against the filed manual (typically zero tolerance), form alignment with what was filed in SERFF, and system pass criteria for ACORD form auto-population, OFAC screening, and producer licensing checks at bind.

Cover ACORD 125 (commercial app), 130 (workers comp), 140 (property), and 25 (COI) flows. Confirm auto-populated fields aren't carrying stale data from prior-year templates — drift in payroll, sales, or class codes is the silent killer of an accurate filed application.

Sample at least 25 quotes per state spanning hazard grades and exposure bases. Any deviation from the filed rate is an unfiled rate at issuance — material finding territory.

Capture critical, high, medium, and low counts. Critical = anything that produces an incorrect rate, a non-compliant form, or a coverage gap at bind. Critical defects must close before go-live; everything else can be tracked into the post-launch backlog.

Convene compliance, underwriting, IT, and the executive sponsor. Document the decision with reasoning. A delayed go-live is recoverable; a launch with open critical defects rarely is once policies have bound.

Set the rhythm: weekly steering committee, biweekly executive update, ad-hoc compliance and regulatory escalations. Each audience gets one channel; cross-posting fragments accountability.

RAG status against the SERFF timeline, budget variance, open critical risks, and decisions needed. Keep it to one page; the sponsor will skim it before joining the steering committee.

Any milestone on the critical path that misses its target date gets escalated same-day to the program manager and within 24 hours to the executive sponsor. Surprises at the next standing meeting are an accountability failure.

Pull bind volume, hit ratio, early loss signals, producer feedback, and any compliance escalations from the first 30 days post-launch. Document what to carry into the next program; institutional memory leaks fast once the team disperses.