News

As we enter the New Year, we thought it appropriate to remind filers of best practices when creating and submitting Compact filings. The Compact will be issuing a series of best practice tips in the upcoming weeks to facilitate a smoother filing experience. This week's best practice concerns information that should appear in the Filing Description.  As the Filing Description has taken the place of cover letters, please do not attach a cover letter as a separate document to the Additional Supporting Documents tab. If information has already been included in the actuarial memos and/or forms, refrain from repeating this information in the General Description. Even with character limitations, all necessary information should be included in the Filing Description field, eliminating the need for a cover letter.  If your content exceeds the character limitations of the field, best practice is to remove any information outside of the parameters set forth below unless it is pertinent for review.

Two classic areas to reduce the length of your Filing Description are as follows:

A. State Required Supporting Documents. Remember that the TOI will generate the submission requirements relative to the filing that appear under the State Required Supporting Documents tab.  The information that appears under the State Required Supporting Documents tab should not be duplicated in the Filing Description.  The submission requirements include identifying applicable uniform standards, Flesch score certification, actuarial memorandum field, statement of variability field and field to attach any necessary third-party filer authorization.  Please address each submission requirement directly on the State Required Supporting Documents tab and refrain from including "See Filing Description" in the submission requirement Comment field.  

B. Associated Filings. For associated filings, the more user-friendly and efficient path is to use SERFF functionality built into the Associated Filings feature. The feature provides a Reason field, which permits notating what form or supporting document in the associated filing is being used with specific forms or supporting documents in the current filing as well as indicating forms being replaced.  Since more detail is now captured under Manage Associated Filings, no longer include this information in the Filing Description.

Next week's Tip will provide further guidance on the specific information to include in the SERFF Filing Description field.  

If you have any questions, please reach out to the Compact Office via comments@insurancecompact.org.