01 — Process landscape
Where the first processes sit
An insurer's landscape has three bands. Management processes set the frame: product governance, risk and solvency, compliance, internal audit. Support processes keep the organisation running. The core is where the customer is: a policy is applied for and issued, a claim is reported and settled, a renewal is offered, a complaint is answered.
Two core processes are typically captured first, because they are where the most people work, the most hand-overs happen and the most knowledge sits unwritten: claims handling and policy onboarding. Both have a clear start and end, cross only a few departments and carry one decision in the middle, which makes them good first diagrams. Once both exist, the landscape fills in from several diagrams, and the next candidates, renewals and complaints, are drawn with the same lanes.
HIGHLIGHTED: TYPICALLY CAPTURED FIRST
02 — Example processes
Two processes to start with
Both diagrams are fictional example models, drawn the way patchley draws them: one lane per role, systems and documents at the step that uses them, control steps marked. The .bpmn file of each example is available on request.
Claims handling
A customer reports a motor claim. The handler registers it in the claims system and asks for the documents. The underwriter checks coverage against the policy file, the one step that decides where the case goes. If the claim is covered, the handler approves the payout; if not, the underwriter declines with reasons, and the customer receives either way.
- The coverage check is a marked control step: who checks, against which document, what evidence stays.
- The gateway "Covered?" sits in the underwriter's lane; the decision has an owner.
- "Provide documents" is a waiting point: the process pauses until the customer delivers.
Policy onboarding
An applicant asks for cover. Service records the application, underwriting assesses the risk and prepares an offer, the applicant accepts, and the policy is issued and sent. In the real process the interesting parts are the waits: for missing documents, for a second signature, for the medical or technical information a risk assessment needs.
- Where the four-eyes check sits before an offer leaves the house, and who gives it.
- Which steps write to the policy system and which are still done by email or on paper.
- Where the process waits for the applicant, and what happens when nothing arrives.
03 — What matters here
Control steps, roles and documents
In insurance the diagram is only useful when three things are visible on it: the checks that must not be skipped, the role that performs each step, and the document that enters or leaves it. This is general orientation on what to capture, not legal advice.
Control steps
The coverage check before a payout, the four-eyes approval above an authority limit, the risk assessment before an offer, the check for fraud indicators on a claim. A marked control step names who checks, what is checked and which evidence remains, so that an auditor can follow the case later.
Roles in lanes
Customer, service, claims handler, underwriter, loss adjuster, compliance, process owner. One lane per role makes every hand-over visible. Lanes can be taken from the org chart, so the same role names appear in every diagram of the landscape.
Documents and systems
Claim notification, policy file, application, offer, policy document, expert report, decline letter; the claims system and the policy system behind them. Each document is attached to the step that creates or needs it, which is where most waiting starts.
The handbook describes the intended process. The diagram captured with the people who run it shows the actual one, including the exceptions, and only the actual process can be checked, improved or handed to an AI agent later.
04 — How a first process is captured
From the claims team's own words to a diagram, analyses and a deck
A first process in insurance is captured from the people who run it, not from the handbook: a handler and an underwriter describe a real case in a workshop, patchley listens live or joins the Microsoft Teams call, or it reads the existing process description as a PDF or DOCX. The draft diagram is on the screen while they talk, and they correct it in their own words.
EXPORTS: BPMN 2.0 XML, SVG, PNG, XLSX, POWERPOINT · APP HOSTED IN GERMANY · AI MODELS FROM A EUROPEAN PROVIDER, HOSTED IN THE EU
05 — The industry report
Process capture in insurance, as a document
The report describes the typical core processes, where process knowledge gets lost, the regulatory context in general terms (VAG, Solvency II, IDD, DORA), where AI agents can help and which guardrails they need, and how to start. Fictional examples, no client data.