Operational Maturity Assessment

You'll receive a clear picture of how your operations measure up to the competition. Our benchmarking approach provides your executive team with an objective “rating” for productivity and process maturity.

What's Your Rating? – Insurance company executives base many of their decisions on the impact to their industry rating, however they don't have a clear picture of how their operations measure up to the competition. What proven methods can you adopt from other companies in the areas of agent responsiveness, underwriting productivity, and efficiency for claims and billing?

Problem Statement - Small to mid-sized insurance companies are experiencing growth and higher customer expectations. It is not uncommon to find a department such as underwriting that has exceeded its capacity under the current business process. Leveraging the mind-share of an underwriter is critical for success and is integral to the attainment of key business goals. Companies need to look at best practices to help them streamline workflows and minimize manual processing in addressing the workload problem. They should not assume that creating new positions is the answer to support the current and forecasted premium volumes. For key functional areas such as underwriting, claims, and billing, companies often miss the opportunity to reduce costs and improve productivity through proven methods.

Right Approach - The first step in improving operations is to gauge its current level of effectiveness. This should be done using a set of standards and criteria that is based on industry best practices. Management needs to assess its operations and assign an objective “rating” for productivity and process maturity. Such a benchmarking approach is invaluable to an executive team trying to achieve success, which starts with a determination of how they measure up. In addition to a best practice comparison, there needs to be an overview of potential solutions that will resolve gaps within the current process and a picture of which resources are focused on the appropriate tasks.

There should also be an analysis of the current process as compared with the competition, while taking into account integrity/quality, the workflow, and budgetary constraints. This can be achieved by reducing the manual “back and forth” processes, by adopting proven operational methods and by engaging the right people such as underwriters and producers in more value-add activities. The findings should be examined in an objective manner using sound tools and techniques from a proven methodology to guide the decision makers towards good decisions. Effective and efficient policy workflow redesign and improved processing automation will deliver benefits to all involved stakeholders.

Info724's Benchmarking Service
Info724 will play an advisory role on a regular basis, which will be spread across several weeks if appropriate. Here are some of the key deliverables we provide:

• Quick assessment of current process and goals for an operational area of your choice, along with guidance to avoid common mistakes before making changes.
• Diagnostic analysis and a “rating” of effectiveness for the targeted operational area, including a benchmark report.
• Best practices list for that operational area, provided from our industry knowledge/experience.
• High level analysis of your internal systems and architecture for up to three key processes, which will serve as a baseline for developing a “to-be” improved process.