The key concern of the insurance industry these days is the ever-present management of risk: financial, economic, regulatory, and operational risk. Other concerns include operational efficiency and margin expansion, as well as new product and service innovation.

Focusing on operational efficiency, some of the major performance markers in claims operations, for example, include Loss Ratio, Time to 'closed,' and Claims Leakage. For each of these, do you model them (what happens to Time to 'closed' if we invest more in IVR and associate headcount?), do you plan for them (forecasted # of cases with time to closed greater than average), do you have a dashboard that monitors close times by branch, by product line, or by claim size?

Do you close the loop: when we learn from the dashboard that some teams are slower than others, do we feedback that information to the drivers of the forecast? Or even better, do we invest in training hours for that team and monitor the results. If we see a cause and effect of training hours to close time, do we take that 'institutional learning' and apply it to other teams?

There are a variety of management systems that enable this kind of business intelligence and performance management, including Straight-Through Processing Analysis (looking for operational efficiency outcomes) and the overall claim value-chain analysis. Each are part of the holistic xPM system.

BROADSHEET SNEAK-PEEK: INSURANCE

POTENTIAL INITIATIVES THAT CAN BE STARTED FROM THE DISCOVERY ANALYSIS

PEER BENCHMARKS: INSURANCE PERFORMANCE MARKERS