Eliminating the “Fearsome Foursome”
With new tech-based solutions risk managers won’t lose sleep over these pervasive issues
1. Consolidating Program Data
Many risk managers at large and complex enterprises have long dreaded the burden of gathering details related to their insurance programs from disparate and often unique sources. In order to prepare for renewals or adapt their insurance programs to organizational changes, mergers, acquisitions, leadership and strategic changes, they need the ability to quickly capture data from policy binders, schedules, spreadsheets, diagrams, and partner portals. Meanwhile, complicating their decision-making is the fact that all of this information often is in different forms, and involves unique terms, coverages and currencies. On top of everything, competing and conflicting technologies which don’t communicate with each other can make data hygiene difficult.
2. Demonstrating Economic Value of Insurance
Whether this imperative comes from senior leadership, divisional or operations heads or originates from within the risk management department itself, it can be a challenge to assemble all the pieces of evidence to support insurance purchasing decisions. Unfortunately, this exercise can apply to any number of coverages. At times, when executives attempt to calculate the costs of insurance, services, loss prevention, and losses there’s not sufficient clarity to align with financial benefits needed to create an economic model of value being delivered. Why does this occur? In most cases, the enterprise’s data sources are inconsistent, incongruous, and sometimes incompatible, forcing an over-reliance on assumptions rather than facts. This can lead to poor decision-making and serious gaps in protection, and potentially disastrous uninsured loss events.
3. Reliance on Outside Parties
Especially during a hard insurance market, a number of difficult questions about your organization’s insurance program are sure to come up in meetings with leadership, board members, division heads and other key decision-makers. What are spending with such and such a carrier across all lines of coverage this year? What is our total premium in China or some other critical jurisdiction? What is the total of my E&O claims recoveries? For risk managers, the obstacles to providing a ready response have been too many sources to align, or that certain policy and program data haven’t been routinely tracked, or that they simply don’t know where to find the information.
4. Flying Blind when Budgeting for Renewals.
In the current environment, nobody wants to enter the renewal process without a full complement of handy and relatable premium and rate information and complete and up-to-date exposure data. They may have exposure information in one place, while maintaining premiums, fee, and related data elsewhere, and accumulating current rate and market guidance in yet another place. With all this information kept in silos, the sources aren’t relatable, and the entire renewal process starts off on the wrong track.
Technology to the Rescue
If there’s a common thread to each of these “fearsome foursome” barriers to winning insurance program management, it’s that critical information isn’t readily accessible or available on a timely basis. Furthermore, even when you can get key data quickly, it may not be in the proper format to make critical decisions or act upon.
The good news is that new technology-based applications, such as those provided by LineSlip Solutions, enable risk managers to gather, store, and organize their data for instant access and timely reporting. You can digitize insurance policy data going back several years for spending trend analysis and quick analysis of carrier relationships. At the same time, you can obtain all necessary underwriting data, such as COPE (construction, occupancy, protection and exposure) information for accurate and timely submissions.
In addition, risk managers can readily integrate policy, program and exposure data captured through various LineSlip tools with their risk management information systems to perform more sophisticated analytics and drive powerful and timely decision-making. Thanks to the tools and resources now available through LineSlip Solutions, risk managers have a clear path to winning insurance program management.