Financial Analytics for an Agile Insurance Organization

Peter Witham is director and financial services lead for UNIT4 Business Software.

Change is relentless in the insurance industry. Evolving regulations, business management changes such as M&As, and diversification into new product lines or markets are just some of the many changes that bombard insurance company executives on an ongoing basis.

To run effectively, insurers need to know the state of their finances at any point in time and how they can best address business issues that arise. They rely on vital information on key areas of the business that is stored within the finance management system to provide insight into profitability and other key measures, and help them identify areas of concern and potential opportunities. Particularly when things are moving so quickly, it's important for executives to have an accurate view across the organization and access to finance data in real time. 

Insurers can gain this visibility and effectively adapt to ongoing changes in the marketplace by implementing these best practices in analytics:

• Focus on information. Effective reporting requires a robust financial information model.  Establish systems and processes to effectively capture, store, maintain and analyze financial data. Capture the information you need from the right sources, and structure the data to support maximum accessibility and flexibility. Finally, ensure that you can easily export the data as needed to other systems.

• Achieve visibility without boundaries. Make sure that everyone is looking at the same data, by combining general ledger, accounts payable and accounts receivable into one single ledger. A single ledger eliminates reconciliation, manual effort and errors. Establish seamless integration between your accounting solution and other key systems in the organization, such as claims, premiums, and reinsurance to capture important information from different silos. Financial information needs to be readily accessible across the business—despite country borders, language barriers, differing regulations or currencies.  
• Get senior-level support. Enlist the support of senior executives right from the start.  Make the business case on how analytics can help your organization be better informed to respond to changing conditions. Turn financial analysis into actionable decisions that address business needs, such as meeting regulatory demands.
• Create a collaborative brain trust. Involve key stakeholders from departments across your organization that can benefit from financial analysis and insight. Work with your colleagues throughout the planning and implementation process to ensure that you are collecting the right data to solve their business needs.
• Use flexible reporting.  To ensure that changes in one area will automatically appear in reports and system routines; implement a “one-to-many” system maintenance approach. 
• Share analytics across the organization. Use an easy-to-use analysis solution that doesn't require specialized staff. It allows you to push analytics deeper company-wide and support better decision making – not just at the top, but throughout the organization. When business intelligence is “accessible to the masses,” your whole organization works smarter.
• Give everyone the reports that they need. Reporting is most effective if it addresses the specific needs of the business unit or division. Implement a multi-dimensional reporting model that allows different lines of business to measure and view metrics in different ways.
• Measure and monitor. Integrate decision making in a closed-loop process that includes planning, forecasting, modeling, budgeting and reporting. Determine what you need to measure and how much detail you need. For example, if you are measuring profitability, determine if you need to analyze it by state, salesperson, product line or other criteria. Implement a process for monitoring performance, using KPIs and scorecards, and aim for continuous improvement.

These best practices helped an insurer with more than 500 employees across 13 states gain real-time visibility into its financial operations, which helps them identify cost-cutting opportunities, among other benefits. Its financial management system accommodates a wide variety of business needs—from compliance and audits, to management reporting—and addresses the information needs of different departments. By implementing seamless system integration, the insurer was able to gather data into its accounting solution from several systems, including premiums, claims, cash, loss reserves, and reinsurance.

By accessing real-time accounting information, the company is able to analyze monthly financial performance, expense by divisions and by expense accounts, and insurance premiums and losses by lines of business and by state.  Using the data in its finance system, the insurer prepares income statements and balance sheets, trial balances, expense management and analysis, statutory reports, and trends reports of dynamic rolling monthly figures.  Employees analyze the data in a variety of ways – such as by division, by expense account and by location, and they drill down into the data to a very detailed level.

Financial data is also used by treasury, accounts payable, and financial reporting departments to analyze expenses and find opportunities to reduce costs. The insurer's financial management system integrates with forecasting software, providing the data used for forecasting analysis and reporting; for example, the company compares actual company-wide expenses and premiums with the respective forecasts. 

To be competitive in today's fast-paced, evolving marketplace, insurers need real-time visibility into their organization. Financial analytics can provide real-time insight and a view into roadblocks or potential opportunities. With effective processes and an agile financial management system, insurers make informed decisions that address the needs of the entire organization, and comply with regulations. It's a formula to help insurers steer a course for healthy growth.