Corporations run internal insurance operations that look after their first-party insurance. These policies help mitigate risks inherent to the business and are different from customer-facing insurance services.
A major South African financial corporation does exactly this. It gathers the risk exposure information from the group annually, maintaining records of corporate insurance policies and claims within its financial institution insurance programme. But when its systems fell short, the financial sector giant approached thryve to deploy the best in modern technology services.
The challenge
Keeping an eye on the corporation’s risks and mitigations created numerous challenges for thryve’s customer. Several related to processing and administration of claims. There were also barriers to the annual collection process for insurance renewal data.
Specific pain points arose as thryve audited the customer’s environment. Users could not easily customise interfaces and align systems with the business’ processes. Changes to questionnaires were difficult and tedious – it wasn’t possible to set question-and-answer validation rules. Problems emerged when making changes to the structure in an insurance renewal data collection questionnaire, and policy aggregate erosion tracking was not possible.
thryve’s research concluded that the system was dictating processes and not adapting to the business. The incumbent solution was from an international provider and exchange rates made costs unpredictable. Since the system’s structure required expensive technical interventions to produce adequate reports, this was a significant barrier. The incumbent service provider wasn’t able to remedy any of these challenges.
The requirement
thryve’s client wanted to resolve the above while sourcing the necessary consulting experience locally. The project had to improve on the existing system benchmark and modernise operations. This included the system’s ability to align with an evolving insurance programme. Business processes should lead the change, not follow it.
The solution needed to empower and encourage users to leverage the advanced technologies of the platform, providing value in what they do and how they do it. The customer also wanted to strengthen the insurance programme’s information accuracy, achieved through improved system data validations and by systemising key insurance program data tracking processes.
The solution
Thryve suggested implementing a modern risk and insurance technology solution – replacing the customer’s system with Riskonnect, utilising its risk management information system framework to ensure compatibility with existing processes. The project was initialised in early 2018 and took less than a year to complete. It focused on improving claims and policy/programme management, primary aggregate erosion tracking and the annual insurance renewal data collection process.
Built on Salesforce technologies, Riskonnect is a modern integrated risk management platform, quick to deploy, integrate and scale with existing business systems. The project was treated as a new implementation to take advantage of current and emerging technologies. It additionally helped map, update and improve existing processes.
Riskonnect is highly customisable without lock-in: it adapted to the customer’s information gathering and reporting processes. Integration of various other systems with the platform improved information gathering and customising questionnaires. Much of this can be done by staff, reducing reliance on the customer’s own internal ICT resources.
thryve implemented the solution and provided maintenance, training and support. Not only did costs stay local, but old licensing models were replaced by new consumption and utilisation-based billing that is more predictable and less wasteful.
The result
The customer soon realised concrete improvements in its claims and insurance administration, insurance renewal data collection and reporting, and analytics. The system follows the banking customer’s processes, rendering it intuitive and complementary to staff expertise. System screens, questionnaires and other interfaces can be customised to suit workflows without creating legacy lock-in. The customer can track primary aggregates to ensure accuracy and prevent costly mistakes.
Reporting times are down and reports are both more timely and accurate. Dashboards have brought all stakeholders closer to the operations. Looking forward, thryve’s customer has already started exploiting the data analytics features inherent to the Riskonnect platform.