By Jean-Stéphane Faubert
Toronto, ON (Nov. 27, 2014) – Underwriting is widely recognized as a critical component of an insurance value chain. Because it spans multiple lines of products (e.g., personal, commercial, automobile, home, etc.), finding simple, orthogonal metrics for evaluating, guiding, and improving underwriting team performance is not an easy task. By focusing on four Analytics categories, being Sales, Quality of Service (QoS), Productivity, and Employee Performance, and their corresponding eye-friendly dashboards, underwriting managers can efficiently lead their teams towards achieving their objectives.
The Sales Analytics category brings together all the measures that are useful for setting and following growth objectives: for particular teams, for brokers and agents, and for entire product lines. For example, this category includes information on premium amounts and policy counts, as well as factors affecting profitability such as flex usage and claims frequency ratios.
A properly designed Sales dashboard allows answering straightforward questions at a glance (e.g., “What is the sum of direct written premiums during a specific period of time?”) Furthermore, it includes complex analytical information, such as the sum of written policy exposures related to new business transactions in a given period compared to the previous period.
The Quality of Service Analytics category provides measures of the quality of interactions, with brokers, agents, and clients, mostly in terms of processing time. For example, measures within this category will reveal if the underwriting transactions are being completed within predefined target time frames. This Analytics category includes all the measures needed to ensure underwriting efficiency while enforcing standards throughout the underwriting process. Here, a properly designed dashboard quickly allows managers to identify transactions that are past their target due-dates, allowing them to react in a promptly manner and realign their team’s efforts accordingly.
The Productivity Analytics category provides information needed to support shorter decision-making cycles. Its measures allow answering questions such as: What is the number of pending transactions? How many transactions are being completed on a daily basis? Etc. With this kind of information, managers can gain insight into call-center inbound-call and related transaction statistics for the purpose of adjusting operational processes on an as-needed basis. This kind of information can be used to determine hiring and overtime needs for a specific team of underwriters, for example. The dashboard in this context is especially useful for quickly assessing a particular team’s relative performance.
The final Analytics category of interest for underwriting managers is Employee Performance. Here, the focus is on information pertaining to the operational efficiency of individual underwriters. How many transactions are pending completion for a particular employee? What is the retention ratio of a particular employee? Etc. In this context, trends, performance patterns, opportunities for improvement, and a good deal more can be revealed. In this context, a dashboard can serve as a good starting point for one-on-one discussions between managers and employees.
As discussed, categorizing information into Sales, QoS, Productivity, and Employee Performance provides management with tremendous insight into daily underwriting operations, performance, and trends. The Underwriting Performance Analytics Solution developed by InEdge is especially geared towards managers leading teams of specialized underwriters. This turnkey solution addresses the most important concerns of underwriting managers by providing Analytics categories of information in the form of visual dashboards that together paint an overall picture of operations while highlighting the most important measures and trends.
For more details on how the right Analytics solution can improve underwriting performance, please read the InEdge White Paper, .
About the Author
Jean-Stephane Faubert is a Senior Solutions Architect at InEdge. He has more than 20 years of experience at designing and implementing information technology solutions. For more than half of his career, his focus has been on the design and implementation of Analytics solutions. Over the years, Jean-Stephane has designed Analytics solutions for clients in several industries, such as Insurance, Banking, Brokerage, Health, and others. His expertise covers the whole spectrum of Analytics project-specific tasks ranging from strategic planning, solutions architecture, project management and assessment, all the way down to data modeling and detailed design.
About InEdge
InEdge is a leader in Insurance Analytics solutions. Experienced at quickly leveraging data, InEdge seamlessly and powerfully creates business advantage for its clients. Since its creation in 1994, InEdge has designed and implemented some of the most sophisticated analytical applications available today. Our clients add up to an impressive roster of Property & Casualty and Life Insurance companies. Our Analytics solutions improve and make easier decision-making at all levels for our clients.
Source: InEdge
