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The Lifecycle of a New Case

This article walks through the full path a Case takes in the Advocate Platform — from the moment it’s created through the point it becomes an active “Servicing” case.

A Note on Terminology: “Case Type” is a setting chosen when a case is created — “New Case” for brand-new insurance policies, or “Renewal Case” for existing policies that are renewing now or in the future. A “New Case” is also automatically switched to Case Type “Renewal Case” once it’s approved and transitions into “Servicing” — which is why the platform still labels a Servicing case a “Renewal Case” internally. The two ideas — the Case Type chosen at setup, and the case’s current status — are related but not the same thing.

STAGE 01

Building the Case with the Case Agent

  1. Every case starts with a batch of documents.

    1. To build a Case, the Case Agent needs:

      1. Policy documents, completed with as much information as possible.

      2. Any relevant asset documents – typically the appraisal, a flood certificate, the insurance documents (Acords), and any other third-party reports that apply.

  2. The Case Agent reads the appraisal first for asset details, then fills in anything it can’t find there from the insurance documents.

    1. From the same upload, a few key selections get made:

      1. Case Type – “New Case” (refer to the terminology note above).

      2. Risk Profile – chosen from the profiles pre-set for the organization; options vary by asset type, and the profile selected determines which compliance requirements apply to the case going forward.

      3. Asset Type – confirmed by the agent, or by a person if the Agent can’t determine it on its own.

  3. From there, the Case Agent takes over automatically. It:

    1. Creates the Asset(s).

    2. Creates the Policies.

    3. Builds the full compliance checklist directly from the uploaded documents.

    4. Only pauses when it genuinely needs a human call – confirming an asset type it couldn’t determine, for example – before continuing on its own.

Outcome: the Asset(s), Policies, and Compliance Checklist all exist — but the Case is still in “Draft” status.

STAGE 02

Filling in Remaining Details & Moving to Open

  1. A Case sits in “Draft” status — created, but not yet ready for review — until its remaining details are completed from the “Overview” tab.

    1. Required fields are flagged with a red asterisk throughout the platform, which makes them easy to spot. What’s left generally falls into two groups:

      1. Case identifying details – Case ID, Case name, the loan term, the deal’s closing date, and the risk review deadline.

      2. The parties involved – the insured (borrowing entity), the certificate holder, whether premiums are escrowed by the lender, and the insurance contact for the case.

  2. Check each policy the Agent created before moving on:Check the policy’s settings, especially any red-asterisk fields.

    1. Check its “Compliance Checklist” for anything left blank.

    2. A deeper review comes in Stage 3, but catching gaps early here saves rework later.

  3. Completing these details transitions the Case into “Open” status — active and being worked, with its Policies and Assets available for review. At this point, the platform:

    1. Generates the Case’s Tasks, which are fully customizable to an Organization’s needs.

    2. Assigns each Task a status icon: an empty grey circle for “Open”, a green check for “Complete”, and a red diagonal line for “Cancelled”.

  4. Check the Asset(s)

    1. If the Asset carries a warning icon, required fields are still missing — the same quotation-based validation used throughout the compliance checklist applies to asset fields as well.

Note: Non-Enterprise accounts skip this stage’s requirements entirely.

Outcome: the Case shows “Open” status, its Tasks have been generated, and the Asset has no missing fields.

STAGE 03

Validating, Requesting Revisions, and Checking Compliance

  1. With the Case “Open”, this stage is about the review: confirming what the Case Agent extracted and understanding exactly where the Case stands. A Policy is ready for this kind of review once:

    1. All fields on the associated Asset(s) have been completed.

    2. The Policy has been created.

    3. All documents needed for the review have been uploaded to the “Documents” tab and associated with the correct Policy.

  2. From there, a Policy’s “Compliance Checklist” must be filled in one of two ways:

    1. AI Extraction – the extraction tool reads a selected document and fills in the matching fields automatically. *AI isn’t perfect, so extracted data is always worth a double-check.

    2. Manual Entry – fields can be filled in directly, top to bottom, whether they’re dropdown selections or open text.

    3. Either way, every field in the checklist carries a quotation linking back to precisely where that value came from, so it can be checked against the source document.

  3. The “Compliance” tab gives users a snapshot of the running Compliace. It includes:

    1. A Compliance score.

    2. Compliant, non-compliant, and missing items, each expandable for detail.

  4. Once a policy has been reviewed, “Policy Revisions” provide the outstanding, non-compliant items:

    1. Revisions can be viewed for a single policy or several at once, and feedback can be bundled together or sent perPpolicy.

    2. If nothing appears for a Policy, that Policy is compliant.

    3. Feedback can be copied and shared with the broker however the team’s workflow calls for it – pasted into an email, for instance.

      1. Compliance requirements vary by Lender, and Lender profiles are kept up to date on our side — flag anything in the feedback that looks off for a given Lender’s requirements.

  5. When a broker sends back a revised document, it’s processed the same way the original was:

    1. The agent extracts the updated values.

    2. It flags exactly what changed, for the reviewer to accept or reject.

    3. Rejecting keeps the prior value in place.

Outcome: The Compliance Checklist has been validated, feedback has gone out through “Policy Revisions”, and any returned revisions have been reviewed.

STAGE 04

Closing Compliance Gaps & Approving

  1. Once the back-and-forth with the broker has settled, whatever’s left gets closed out directly from the “Compliance” tab, where every rule for the Case is consolidated in one place.

  2. Anything that won’t be resolved with a document can be waived instead:

    1. A “Temporary” waiver follows the policy’s own expiration date and becomes eligible for renewal at that point.

    2. A “Permanent” waiver stays in effect until loan maturity — and carries into Servicing if the case transitions later.

    3. Creating a waiver captures:

      1. A name for the Waiver.

      2. The exception amount.

      3. The reason.

      4. Any applicable conditions.

      5. Supporting documentation.

    4. A new Waiver starts in “Requested” status; once it’s been finalized with the lender, it’s updated to “Approved”, which is what clears it from the Case’s non-compliant items.

  3. A Case is ready for Approval once:

    1. Every policy on the Case is in “Approved” status.

    2. Every task on the “Overview” tab is “Complete” or “Cancelled” – no open tasks remain.

    3. Premium has been filled in for each Policy on the “Premium Recap” tab.

  4. From there, approving the Case triggers one more check:

    1. If any non-compliant items remain, they surface in a prompt listing each one.

    2. Where a Waiver has already been approved for one of those items, that can be recorded in the “Approval Exception” box so the case still moves forward.

    3. Both the Case and its Policies then move to “Approved” status.

  5. The “Coverage Report” – a PDF that consolidates the coverage group, asset, and policy-level compliance picture – gets generated at this point as the record of full compliance.

Outcome: The Case is in “Approved” status, its compliance items are compliant, waived, or recorded as approval exceptions, and a “Coverage Report” has been generated.

STAGE 05

Transitioning to Servicing

  1. Approving a new Case automatically prompts its conversion into an ongoing “Servicing” Case.

  2. Once confirmed, the Case exists going forward as what the platform still labels internally as a “Renewal Case”.

  3. This isn’t the only way a Case reaches Servicing:

    1. A Case can also be created directly as a Servicing Case from the start — useful for auditing Policies that already exist or are coming up for renewal, without routing through the Case Agent build in Stage 1. These direct-entry cases fall into two categories:

      1. Pre-close – typically built from the appraisal report, a Property Conditions Report (PCR), a zoning report, a flood zone determination report, Acord 28 and Acord 25, and (where applicable) an environmental report, seismic report, or SOV.

      2. Post-close – typically built from Acord 28 and Acord 25, full policies (if available), and an SOV where applicable.

    2. Either way, the case ends up in the same place: an active Servicing case, with its own Assets, Policies, and Compliance Checklist, ready to be audited going forward.

Outcome: The Case now exists as a Servicing Case, ready for its first renewal review.

The transition to Servicing is complete.

What Happens Next

Once a Case has transitioned into Servicing, it enters an ongoing cycle of renewal reviews — a different process from the one-time path described above, and one that’s covered in its own training materials. For onboarding purposes, the key takeaway is this: everything up to this point is a one-time setup journey a case only travels once. Servicing is where the Case lives for the rest of its life.

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