Reading a payment line by line: cell FL-0417

A settlement note should fit on one page and answer one question: why this amount, at this time. After Storm Ines, we sent 61 of them. This is how the note for cell FL-0417 reads, line by line, and the reasoning behind each choice. The storm and the cell are fictional demo data, as noted on the Policy Disclosures page.

The header

The top of the note carries the cell, the policy and the time: Cell FL-0417, Policy WIND-2209, T+41 h. The T+ clock counts from the minute the index crossed the strike, not from the first forecast, so a policyholder can see how much of the interval was calculation and how much was the transfer. We tried a calendar date first. People kept asking for the time.

The three readings

Directly under the header are three numbers, side by side: ground station 168 km/h, satellite estimate 173 km/h, radar 171 km/h. The agreed value is the median, 171, and all three sit inside the ±3 % band (166–176).

The ladder

The next block draws the policy’s tiers as a short staircase with a marker: 150 km/h for Tier 1, 168 for Tier 2, 189 for Tier 3. The marker sits just above 168, and the line beneath it reads “Tier 2 · 50 % of the limit”. Underneath is a smaller line that says how far the reading was from Tier 3: 18 km/h. This is the line that people read twice, and it is the one that prompted the most questions in testing, so we kept it.

The money

The payment line shows the amount, the account, the currency and the status. In this demo the limit was $250,000, so the payment is $125,000. Below it is the line we are proudest of: “Claim forms filed: 0”. It is there because it is true, and because it is easy to forget that an entire process vanished from the note.

What we left out

We took out the map, because a map invites the question of why the next cell was different, and the answer belongs in a conversation with the underwriter. We took out the premium history. We took out any sentence that began with “we are pleased to”. The note is allowed to be plain.

What comes next

Version two adds a field for the alert that preceded the event, with the time it was sent and the contacts who received it. That way, the next time a client asks what the prevention part of the policy does, the answer is on the same page as the money.