HOW DO YOU MAKE COMPLEX DATA FUNCTIONAL AND RELIABLE?

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1 The Industry Insurance is the backbone of modern innovation. In its absence, thousands of modern businesses and individuals would be unable to live productive lives or take the risks necessary for progress. Sharing risk across a community secures the individual against losing it all. Today, it is easy to take insurance for granted. Since insurance is mandated in many circumstances, few people give thought to how risk can seriously impair one s economic well-being. MRS is well aware that insurers need to manage their costs and loss ratios as well as their quotations to achieve their desired return on investment. One need only cite the over $90 billion paid in claims following hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005 to illustrate the magnitude of the insurance industry s reach. COMPANY PROFILE Founded in 1979, MRS Company Ltd. is an innovative IT Consulting, Software, Services and Application Outsourcing company that delivers bottom-line results via dynamic and integrated solutions. Strategic solutions for Project Management, Business Intelligence Reporting, SharePoint and ecommerce highlight the MRS IT Practice Portfolio. MRS Company prides itself on building collaborative long-term relationships with customers and partners founded on service excellence, value, and integrity. MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGIES Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft Office System Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Microsoft Office Performance Point Server To maintain this economically and socially beneficial shared-risk mechanism, complex industry regulation and reporting is necessary. Insurance providers must conduct comprehensive internal audits on an ongoing basis in order to stay competitive and maintain competitive premiums. With the complexity and volume of information to be managed internally and reported externally, MRS provides solutions that make information management manageable. BI CAPABILITIES Data Integration Reporting Analysis Scorecard and Dashboards Enterprise Search BI Discovery and Analysis BI Methodology CORE SERVICES Project management Auxiliary resources Selective interventions Review / quality process Data Warehousing OLAP Predictive Analytics Planning and Budgeting BI Visioning Process BI Project Management Full team implementation Management support Technical experts Repositioning

2 Business Intelligence (BI) has become so essential to the insurance industry that making strategic and tactical decisions in its absence is extremely risky. Insurance companies need to see their business not just across departments such as actuarial, underwriting, marketing/production, claims, and distribution channels, but also deeper into and across each line of business. A holistic view of the entire business promotes profitability by identifying areas to reduce costs and increase revenue. In spite of enormous investments in ERP software and Information Technology, MRS has found that managers and executives in many organizations continue to make key business decisions using information from voluminous reports or fragmented data in personal spreadsheets. Especially in the insurance industry, a strategic BI solution is indispensible to ensure the right information is in front of the right people at the right time and in the right analytical format. This need is particularly acute in insurance where there are a number of unique challenges. MRS recognizes three main issues that dominate the insurance-bi relationship: BI SOLUTION EXAMPLES Toronto Mutual Life needed to monitor and manage its quotations to ensure that its underwriting matched its risk profile. MRS delivered an automated data-mart solution that gave real time visibility and analysis to the rating and underwriting process. Echelon General Insurance faced challenges in obtaining and assembling information to drive timely business decisions. Echelon was particularly concerned with tracking information relating to underwriting, specifically the underwriting coverages and policy attributes. This took time and it was not always possible to bring forward historical data to allow trending analysis of the key metrics. MRS delivered a data-mart solution to allow better insights into data and helped Echelon make quicker, more accurate decisions. Sun Life needed to access Financial Data across numerous source systems in a timely, automated fashion, moving away from manual queries and hand tailored reports The MRS solution gave greater insight into General Ledger transactions and financial analysis. 1. Tracking Earned and Unearned Premiums 2. Claims Analysis Costs 3. Fraud Protection

3 1. Tracking Earned and Unearned Premiums Premiums can be paid upfront or over the length of the policy. This means insurance companies will often be in possession of unearned revenue. Laws, regulations and ethical business practices dictate that unearned premiums be invested in low risk, liquid assets to preserve capital. In the MRS experience, tracking premiums with the help of custom IT solutions brings visibility to what money is earned versus what money is unearned, and identifies revenue available for investing and expenses. Equally important is the tracking of underwriting coverages and attributes. Accurate tracking of this information determines how much risk an insurance company has taken on and whether this accords with the plan for the lines of business and the target return on investment.

4 2. Claims Analysis MRS understands that claims analysis ultimately comes down to reducing costs and charging competitive premiums. Firstly, there are costs associated with having an insurance product line. Insurance product offerings that insure high risk activity will require higher premiums to offset losses and maintain a reasonable loss ratio. The lower an insurance provider s loss ratio, the less attractive the premiums charged to consumers will be. Secondly, process times, claim errors, and other related factors will affect the total cost of doing business. In most cases, three different systems operate in the background, complicating matters further. a) One system addresses underwriting or policy applications and can be used to measure broker performance, geographic analysis, and lost/new/renewal business. b) The second is a claims management system. The relationship between underwriting and claims is particularly difficult to understand without sound BI tools. Understanding this relationship means having a flexible way of examining loss ratio data. Using Excel for this analysis is lengthy, complicated, and provides only static analysis. In the absence of a BI solution it is not possible to test alternative scenarios in an effort to augment high loss ratios or find a sweet spot where loss ratios are low and enable a particularly competitive premium offering to the consumer. These tools improve the certainty that a company is assuming a comfortable risk level. c) The final system addresses reserves management. Laws and regulations identify minimum balances required to be held in insurance company reserves. This is a fine balancing act for companies that want to ensure a sufficient reserve while not tying up extra funds unnecessarily. Maintaining adequate reserve balances and predicting future claims are both crucial tasks. In order to do this accurately, the timing and accuracy of data is of particular importance. Considering whether the accuracy of your findings can be verified through an audit trail and BI system further speaks to the quality of a company s systems and processes. The MRS solution enables Claims insight including: Quick decision insights into fraud Greater insights into higher risk customers Proactive business management Do our claims need to change? Trending on the best claims-loss ratio for the product offering Insight into repeat claimants Geographical analysis of clients for rate and risk calculation Easy access to trends for insurance products development and claims (through data modeling)

5 3. Fraud Protection Individuals who make frequent and illegitimate claims are one of the most common forms of insurance fraud. Unfortunately, third party claims are difficult to track across insurance companies. MRS has seen how being able to track and prevent fraud reduces losses and costs that should be avoided.

6 The Solution MRS begins its work by conducting a thorough BI Needs Assessment from which a BI Roadmap and BI Strategy Formulation Program is built. These are expressly designed to help organizations formalize a BI strategy and improve current capabilities. Using Microsoft Performance Point, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services, BI experts at MRS design and deploy optimum data warehouses and data-marts. With vast practical experience MRS incorporates modeling, reporting, graphing and analysis tools to maximize data accessibility and presentation across the client s user community. BI solutions for insurance must be customizable tools that drive insightful decisions and customer focus. With enormous amounts of complex data to organize and synthesize into practical knowledge, MRS BI solutions offer benefits that are unattainable without a fully functional BI tool. Enjoy a comprehensive view of products, processes and operations Identify cost savings and revenue opportunities to improve profitability Work with a familiar interface for fast, effective and satisfying customer service Replace silos of data in legacy systems with a single customer view Increase customer retention with reporting efficiency and data accuracy Share information across sales, marketing, and service Support speed-to-market products and changing customer needs Achieve scale and operational efficiency with an agile platform Automatically update regulations and compliance to help underwriters accurately assess risk, calculate premiums and service customers. The proven system MRS customizes and implements for its clients enables dynamic analysis of complex data. Coordination of large volumes of data is virtually impossible without the right BI solution. Embracing BI solutions that are customized and proven in the insurance industry means moving to an informed decision-making model that allows businesses to develop winning strategies that meet and exceed goals. Sit down with a MRS Company team representative today to discuss your business needs and see first-hand examples of insurance industry solutions. Using proven BI solutions, MRS makes IT work for you. Discover the knowledge and power that BI can provide. Call a representative today for a complimentary, no-obligation assessment with MRS Company.

7 The M.R.S. B.I. data mart solution built in SQL Server has given us greater insight into our Underwriting and Claims data. Our business planning meetings are now more productive than ever before. Toronto Mutual Life - Greg Holmes, Senior Vice President Systems For a free BI consultation and readiness assessment, contact MRS today at or or info@mrscompany.com.