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Delos Insurance has a stealth weapon battling the 21st Century data deluge. Unlike other insurers and reinsurers that struggle on a daily basis to find and organize critical information, Delos’ employees and associates have all the data they need at their fingertips. As a result, the company can respond quickly to clients and efficiently underwrite, structure and manage deals.
What is Delos’ secret weapon? It’s a powerful technology called associative filing™. Simply put, associative filing uses the easily understood categories of who, what, when and where to organize company-wide information. Every document naturally inherits the associations of its portfolio file so that “tagging” and filing occurs automatically, and the document is linked to every related file in a company’s data system.
Spreadsheets, e-mails and attachments, voice mails, risk data, Office® documents, research and analysis reports – every conceivable kind of information is centrally located and accessible through Outlook®. From there, it can be easily accessed, organized, edited and shared with colleagues.
Data organized by client, risk and underwriting year
At Delos, associative filing enabled the company to organize all data by client, risk, underwriting year and other logical associations. Among other benefits, that led to easy coordination among managing general agents, general agents, TPAs, reinsurers and reinsurance intermediaries, boosting productivity.
Associative filing replaces the old hierarchical filing system with a more natural intuitive system that corresponds to how people actually work – through natural associations and relationships. Such relational contexts might include people, places, activities, products and time.
By contrast, the traditional filing system – based on folders and subfolders – is hierarchical. Its focus on separating information by document type or discreet topic makes retrieval and organization difficult. People can’t always locate their own files, including important e-mails, let alone tap into the files of others. Moreover, files are saved across the enterprise, from hard drives to shared network drives to external storage drives and servers.
Fighting Back Against Information Overload
What’s driving the need for innovations such as associative filing? Virtually every company and its employees are drowning in data. And as more and more information pours in, the overload will only get worse. For example, in 2003, workers spent 17 percent of their time on e-mail related tasks, according to the Radicati Group. By 2006, that number had risen to 26 percent.
But the pace is accelerating. By 2009, Radicati is forecasting that corporate email users will spend 53 percent of their time “managing” email. That means just four or five hours of every workday can be devoted to other job-related tasks.
The cost of information overload is extremely high. IDC, the research organization, estimates that Fortune 500 firms lost $31.5 billion in 2003 due to the inability to find information (IDC, The High Cost of Not Finding Information, June, 2003).
The issue is not information and technology, which have brought tremendous advantages and efficiencies to the business world. The problem is managing all that information. The typical, antiquated filing system has been unchanged for 30 years.
Solving the Information Management Problem
Associative filing solves three key problems in information management: keeping filing simple; managing portfolios of information; and bringing information together to create the “big picture.” Another huge plus: every document is also the most current version, eliminating the all-too-common errors and inefficiencies that result when multiple people are working on different versions.
While associative filing has been used in a range of industries, it is particularly well suited to insurance and reinsurance. These businesses need fast access to information. If they don’t have it, productivity slows, customer satisfaction lags and profits drop. The inability to quickly access complete deal correspondence and due diligence information can negatively impact a company's loss ratio and bottom-line results.
Bottom-line Benefits for Insurers and Reinsurers
The four major advantages for insurance and reinsurance companies include: Immediate access to comprehensive deal information; improved workflow and timeliness among all the parties involved; enhanced communications between teams of people; and transparency to ensure that regulatory, due diligence and compliance standards have been met.
Complete and accurate information: Since insurance and reinsurance are virtually document-dependent and generate multiple layers of information, the ability to store, organize, retrieve and analyze that data is critical.
Associative filing provides a “big picture” view of all relevant information, making it possible for people to execute transactions efficiently, confident that all key pieces of information have been reviewed and incorporated.
For underwriting, this means a more efficient, easily managed underwriting process. For example, underwriters can conduct submissions and renewals, view loss runs, search policy detail, track key performance indicators and manage the entire pipeline without gaps or interruptions.
Timeliness and workflow: The ability to see the “big picture” in real time enables efficient, accurate client communication. This increases client satisfaction and significantly enhances overall customer service.
Additionally, workflow and productivity often get a major boost with associative filing. It is easier to monitor and manage underwriting and other processes, making it possible to complete more transactions.
Communications: Typically, teams of people are involved in a transaction and need to be in regular communication. They may be in different cities or countries. With associative filing, communications and document access can be virtually seamless. With global businesses in particular, a transaction isn’t put on hold because of time differences. Regulatory, due diligence and compliance issues: The transparent nature of associative filing makes it ideal for heavily regulated industries, including fulfilling some of the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley. It also promotes effective due diligence. In most cases, the benefits are achieved without an additional layer of reporting. All businesses are under pressure to do more with less. Getting the right information in the hands of the right people at the right time is critical to effective, timely decisions that expedite the review of submissions, policies, and claims. At Delos, associative filing has led to a more efficient and productive organization. Like other businesses, Delos has found that the ability to increase revenue is directly tied to customer service and the information people have at their fingertips. With associative filing, companies gain that competitive advantage. |
