By Etienne Castonguay, Partner & Co-founder, InEdge
Toronto, ON (Sept. 29, 2015) – Occupying a critical position in the insurance value chain, underwriting receives a well-deserved amount of focus from attentive underwriting managers and executives. As they seek to improve sales and profitability, they need up-to-date information measuring the quality of services offered to brokers, agents, and clients. Here are the top five questions they should be asking in order to tackle the biggest underwriting quality of service challenges head-on.
- What is the average time needed to complete an underwriting transaction?
A basic, crucial function of quality of service metrics is to measure the quality of interactions by processing time. Put simply, are underwriting transactions being completed within the predefined time targets? This information is hugely helpful to underwriting managers, helping them obtain the basic measure of the efficiency of policy underwriting.
- How many outstanding underwriting transactions are past their target completion date?
Are underwriters and/or underwriting teams meeting the time-to-finish objectives set by management? Underwriting managers need access to this information to evaluate the quality of service offered and the efficiency of their teams.
- How long do clients have to wait on the phone when calling for service??
This is all about analysing capacities and setting priorities. This information can help underwriting managers identify important trends and minimize call waiting times towards specific targets.
- How many outstanding transactions are past their effective date?
Underwriting managers are naturally concerned with potential legal issues, therefore they should have timely access to this information to minimize issues that can arise when processing backdated transactions such as potentially accepting risks with pending claims.
- How many calls are answered in the target time?
The number of calls answered in the target time needs to be maximized and is a key indicator of underwriting operations performance.
A clear understanding of quality of service in underwriting operations depends on the ability to obtain intelligible answers to the above five questions. In presenting performance relative to objectives, an analytics solution with quality of service capabilities can help underwriting managers decide where to concentrate the underwriting team’s efforts – by prioritizing certain transaction types, for example. This requires an analytics solution that is fine-tuned to measuring P&C underwriting quality of service, built by a team experienced in the field, with dozens of implementations under their belt.
For details, consult our white paper, Unlocking Underwriting Performance with Analytics.
About the Author
Etienne Castonguay is Partner and Co-founder at InEdge, an insurance Analytics solution provider, where he is responsible for business development and making sure strategies are aligned with the Insurance Industry needs for pre-built Analytics. He has over 25 years of sales and management experience in the distribution of information technology solutions. He previously held various positions with Sybase, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett Packard.
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. Visit InEdge.com.
Source: InEdge
