Increase number of UserDef feilds from 5 to 9

[MrQQish]

Description

We would like to request that the LocUserDef, AccUserDef and PolUserDef fields, currently numbered 1-5, be increased to 1-9.

Reasons for change

We believe that having more options there would be beneficial, especially considering the same exposure data may be run on multiple peril models in Australia and possibly elsewhere.

[aiste-kalinauskaite]

@MrQQish Could you kindly provide further details regarding the necessity for the additional fields? Typically, user-defined fields are utilized to aggregate results, and the current limit of 15 levels seems sufficient. Understanding your specific requirements will help to address your needs. What objectives are you aiming to achieve with the inclusion of more fields?

[MattDonovan82]

Also, if there is a good reasons to increase these fields, it would probably be a better not to limit to 9 and just add the 'XX' at the end.

[MrQQish]

As model developers we dont have a specific need for our own use. However, we anticipate that Australian insurers, brokers, actuarial firms or reinsurers with an interest in Australia may have a need to summarise results by more than 5 fields. For example, we are already aware of past cases where insurers used up fields in other vendor models for a flood flag, a strata indicator, their own risk rating for bushfire and a business unit reference that may have required more than one field. For large residential portfolios the easiest way to do this is by location, with policy or account indicators less likely to be used. Thus the location field range could go greater than 5, and we have proposed taking it to 9. For completeness we suggested doing the same for policy and account.

[aiste-kalinauskaite]

The users can create their own FlexiLocXXX fields (where XXX can be any word/words) and have as many as they like. I don't see that adding anonymous LocUserDef6-9 fields would add value.

[johcarter]

Agree with @aiste-kalinauskaite flexi fields offer unlimited flexibility for additional exposure attribute storage without going outside of the schema. Also flexi fields can be used for summary reporting levels (eg in Oasis loss outputs).