Study Says P-C Inefficiencies Cost Billions

By Michael Ha

NU Online News Service, May 19, 3:14 p.m. EDT?Property-casualty carriers can waste up to $10 on every policy they write because of duplications, bottlenecks and overreliance on paper documents, a study from a business-process software firm has found. [@@]

According to the Exigen Group, based in San Francisco, such inefficient business processes can force insurers to spend up to 30 percent more on their processing claims, policies or customer inquiries than necessary.

The research was based on the analysis of business processes of major personal p-c insurers that represent some 28 percent of the consumer insurance sector and a total of 44 million policies, the firm said.

On its Web site, www.exigengroup.com, Exigen is offering a free guide to help insurers identify symptoms of business inefficiencies in their organizations.

It discusses and highlights common signs of cumbersome processes as well as specific symptoms that management teams can look out for, such as what the firm calls the 'swivel chair syndrome,' where data from one terminal has to be manually retyped into another.

Among personal lines, auto insurance continues to be an area that has many challenges, with significant business-process inefficiencies still intact, partly because of heavy-variance across states and the churn due to claims, said Mark Christiansen, vice president of marketing at Exigen.

Jim Logan, general manager of insurance at the firm, also noted that inefficient business processes can slow the company down and significantly damage the overall health of the business. But unfortunately, he added, "identifying inefficiencies and eliminating them is a complex task that spans multiple departments and, as a result, often gets delayed."

According to the study, insurers can save up to $16 million on every $1 billion of revenue, by reengineering and automating certain processes. Furthermore, companies can save a further 18 percent to 31 percent on the process cost by aggregating transactions over a single, fixed-cost infrastructure shared with other internal departments or even with other insurers, Exigen Group said.

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Study Says P-C Inefficiencies Cost Billions

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