By David Gallagher, Senior Vice President, Hubio Technology —
IBC reporting—and for that matter, all submissions to regulatory bodies, including the GAA and the Facility Risk Sharing pools—is most often seen as an administrative headache with little business benefit.
But it is necessary, and we’ve identified four common problems insurers face that need solutions. The good news is that everyone faces these problems. The bad news is that everyone has to fix them eventually.
- I can’t identify and correct errors before submission
Given that the IBC imposes penalties for errors, this can get costly. Plus, there’s also the problem that high error rates trigger notifications to your senior executive, and nobody wants that. Life would be easier if you had a chance to review and edit before submission.
The answer is to create a solution which provides a User Interface for business user review. Enable these users to review batches before submission, so that errors can be identified and corrected. Errors come from Transcription problems or from Translation from your core systems. In both cases a pre-submission review is beneficial.
This takes some time, and some investment, but it is cost-effective in the long term, and will improve submission quality and submission time.
It can be provided by a third-party solution, or an internal build. If you want to use a third-party product, make sure it can resolve your problems, and most importantly, it is built by people that understand the IBC, GAA and the Risk Sharing Pools.
- Corrections to legacy reporting programs seem impossible
When everyone is busy, and who isn’t, making corrections to your core systems source data can take months. The long time periods can result in errors repeated, extra time to manage the process, and increased penalty fees. Seeing errors repeated month to month, that you wish you could fix and be done with, is frustrating.
Data fixes within your legacy systems can also generate high costs you don’t want to spend and distract you from other core business strategies.
But this is definitely worth a fix. Many submissions, such as with long-tailed claims, require multiple submissions, and error fixing provides benefits immediately and in the future.
You’ll need to assign ownership within your firm and have them identify the best methods to fix these errors. Fixing errors will reduce your overall frustration, and over time, save money.
- You’re incurring penalty fees, that are just too high
It’s not enough to have errors flagged and rejected, but to be fined for these mistakes is just too much. Receiving fines month after month can be demoralizing, and it’s your Company and CEO’s reputation on the line.
Data quality is a problem. Often core insurance systems don’t store the necessary information, or if they do, not in a format compatible to the regulator. Sometimes the information is just not available, but in many cases, algorithms can be applied to calculate or derive what is needed.
A solution that integrates with your core systems, to extract, reformat, validate and help users edit the regulatory submission data, is a must.
To reduce penalty fees, you’ll need to improve the accuracy of the data you extract. It represents an investment, but one that will pay off.
- You are changing your core system, and you realize you need to build a new reporting solution from scratch
You’ve spent years fine-tuning your existing legacy system. But to compete in the market, your company is moving to newer core systems. And guess what, these new systems don’t natively support Canadian Regulatory reporting. So, you have to do it all again with a new system. It’s enough to make you cry.
Sorry, but you’ll have to do it all again – or work with a vendor and have them do the heavy lifting, or better still, use a product they’ve already built.
These problems occur with almost every Canadian Insurer. The good news is that solutions do exist.
Hubio is one third-party vendor, that has solutions to deal with IBC, GAA and Risk Sharing Pool submissions management. There’s also many insurers with deep, talented in-house teams to deal with these problems.
Living with these problems is not an outcome we recommend. Plus, each insurer often has their own, unique set of problems that need to be faced and dealt with. If you want to learn more, or just receive some advice, we’re here to help.
Editor’s Note: David Gallagher is Senior Vice President at Hubio Technology. David has diverse experience in the technology and energy businesses and has contributed outstanding results in consistently exceeding objectives in B2B and B2C sales and market share, awareness and brand building, strategic and operational planning, and corporate communications.
David, and along with his colleagues at Hubio, has been consistent supporter for Insurance-Canada.ca, bringing thought leadership to our events and media. David is also a member of the Insurance-Canada.ca Advisory Board.
