Management and delivery of product information

A method comprising

• during a development phase, creating and storing template information that characterizes types of insurance products,
• during a publication phase, pre-processing the template information to create a published body of information about the types of insurance products and storing the published body of information in a server, the published body of information being configured to require less processing than the template information to respond to questions, and
• during a run-time phase, applying questions received at the server about the insurance products to the published body of information to generate answers to the questions.

A medium on which is stored a machine-readable representation of a product,

• the product including conditional obligations of one party to another,
• the representation of the product being stored in accordance with a standardized format for expression of characteristics of the product, the characteristics including conditions under which a party would be eligible to obtain the product and conditions under which a party that has obtained the product is entitled to receive the benefit of the obligations included in the product,
• the representation of the product implying an interface that enables applications to create, maintain, and access the representation of the product for predefined purposes.

A method comprising

• enabling parties that belong to a supply chain for products to create product definitions for each of the products in accordance with a standardized product-definition format, the products being of a kind that encompass conditional obligations of suppliers of the products,
• enabling each of the parties that create product definitions to store the product definitions in a manner that makes them accessible to at least one of the other parties in the supply chain, and
• giving access to at least one of the parties in the supply chain to the stored product definitions in connection with a commercial transaction.

A method comprising

• enabling an benefits provider or a financial institution to create and maintain, on a server, product information that characterizes products that are distributed by the provider or institution to individuals,
• enabling retrieval at the server of information about the individuals that is under control of the provider or institution or a third party, and
• enabling individuals who are members with respect to the products of the provider or institution to access the server to obtain answers to questions based on the product information and the information about the individuals.