Monitoring can sometimes produce an unintended backlash from a carrier's underwriting staff, particularly when they perceive:

"Too many mechanisms" – An appropriate number of compliance mechanisms is necessary to manage risk, however there is also the risk of laying down too many restrictions. Thirty referral triggers may be fine for one Line of Business, but what happens when that is the norm for all 10 lines an underwriter works with? Do there need to be separate trigger limits for shared limit amounts, individual physician limit amounts, umbrella limit amounts, combined limit amounts, the overall number of physicians, etc.? Too much oversight does not point to a high level of trust and may cripple underwriter confidence and development.

"Too much emphasis on each account decision" – There is a risk of placing too much compliance focus on every individual account. For example, having underwriting leadership review each deal can impede the ability to complete accounts efficiently, particularly when that involves what underwriters perceive as unnecessary procedural items (i.e., "I always refer this ratio and it is always approved").

"Too many surprises" – If, as an example, leadership wanted to require underwriters to do additional calculations for claims frequency & severity on each account, and the opinions of impacted underwriters were not sought out prior to their rollout, the changes would likely be perceived as an imposition.

Getting buy-in from underwriting staff is critical to maintaining morale. Unsolicited changes can easily prompt responses akin to "why are you rolling this out? I don't like this. This will hurt my business." Carriers implementing monitoring procedures need to ensure that the appropriate stakeholder groups understand the business rationale for the compliance requirement, whether it's a strategic imperative or more of a procedural consideration. This extends both to understanding which members of the underwriting staff (e.g., branch managers) to with whom to coordinate activity and what other parts of the organization from which to solicit feedback (such as claims, IT, or risk control).

Special Reports /

Balancing transactional engagement and portfolio management

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