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Case Study
Comprehensive Operational Support Driving Growth.
An international underwriter specializing in insurance and reinsurance in the property and casualty market.
An international underwriter specializing in insurance and reinsurance in the property and casualty market.
The client’s business grew rapidly through acquisition, having doubled its commercial and specialty insurance business with the purchase of a competitor, then acquiring three specialist insurers covering six new markets in the US.
The priority at board level was to integrate the new acquisitions into the group processes and systems, while leveraging the new skills and products across markets. The growing pains for the new group were significant and across the complete lifecycle of insurance services.
Specifically, the board of directors was concerned with missed proposal opportunities due to bottlenecks in the underwriting teams, inconsistency in the quality of service to insurance agents, duplicate functions across the group, backlog in actuarial services preventing the board from understanding the full exposure to risk, and poor discipline with account reconciliations and collections impacting cash flow.
The client’s priority was a transformation, prioritizing on supporting growth, refocusing staff, and eliminating waste in their business processes.
Sutherland launched a high-level discovery process to observe and define current processes and identify the scope for improvement. Sutherland then benchmarked key metrics, and outlined the new operational model and transition approach.
Each process migration commenced with an exhaustive diagnostic of the client’s processes using a Sutherland proprietary methodology. Then Sutherland developed a detailed transition plan, which resulted in a smooth and phased transition of the processes without interrupting normal business operations. Given the specialized nature of the products insured and the wide range of insurance schemes, the Sutherland staff referred to over 80 different conditions when underwriting a single policy. Adding to process complexity was the high frequency of updates to the schemes and the volatility of transaction volumes.
Sutherland undertook several Six Sigma initiatives which:
The Sutherland staff referred to over 80 different conditions when underwriting a single policy.
Within the first 12 months of operations: