Business challenge
The client is a specialist insurer with group assets of over £1 billion, serving over 175,000 customers worldwide. To remain competitive and to retain and grow customer loyalty, there was a need to reduce costs, increase productivity and improve customer service.
Process
The company wanted to “do the right things right” and as a result of this increased and improved focus, reduce their rework and errors, thereby achieving cost reduction naturally.
A 20% reduction was deemed achievable but subject to validation by Accelerant.
Initial analysis revealed three key productivity issues:
- Immediacy of Response: a need was identified to deal first time with each query or request received from the customer.
- Visibility of Production: the company needed to increase awareness of how much work it actually processed
- Resource Capability: individuals needed to be best able to deal immediately with the work, without regularly passing it on to others and causing delays
Variable Cost Optimization
Existing work processes were mapped and analyzed to identify which specific areas were preventing individual underwriters from taking ownership of their tasks. The principle of “Right First Time” was adopted, meaning that rework was removed from the system, freeing up time for everyone to tackle the backlog.
Program and Performance Management
The project focused on ensuring accuracy of the information available from the systems used. With newly available information, a suite of KPIs was designed and installed as part of a new management system.
Organizational Transformation
Individual needs were assessed and training on the most critical processes was designed and delivered, followed by one-to-one coaching.
The intention of the firm to ‘do things right’ was realized; departmental productivity doubled. Team members take responsibility for continuing improvement and increasing their knowledge and productivity is up, while costs have fallen.