A leading UK general insurance brand had realised that they not been sending out policy terms and conditions in line with regulatory processes and procedures at renewal for certain commercial insurance products. This was primarily down to a lack of governance and understanding of how existing customers were being dealt with at the time of renewal invitation and fulfilment. It was clear that a major overhaul of the process was required, contacting a significant book of business to offer an explanation, providing the correct copies of the appropriate wording, addressing any pending claims and ultimately re-design the renewals fulfilment process from the ground up.

s the Programme Lead, I was engaged to;
– fully develop a plan for the renewals business so that it was compliant, trackable, and efficient
– ensure that new business continued to operate as it should do
– establish and implement new ways of working for all processes within the specific Commercial Insurance business area
– eradicate unnecessary effort or costs where possible
– update IT systems and other systemic functions
– manage pending claims processes
– devise a mass roll out policy wording mailing to all effected business (c.40,000 policies)
– ensure that the wider business was kept up to date with progress against an aggressive time line to resolve

My initial priority was to fully map the overall new business and renewals process for the Commercial insurance area ensuring that all relevant systemic and manual interventions were captured accurately and concisely. All relevant documentation including policy wordings, summaries of cover and invites were collated and recorded to ensure the entire process could be reviewed.  The impacted business spanned 6 separate insurance products. 

I set up a working group of multiple business areas including;

• operational teams managed the process from a customer contact perspective
• marketeers drafted the comms that would be sent to the current renewed business
• key operational and fulfilment personnel were readied to mass send documentation to existing business
• planning leads so that once a roll-out plan had been agreed, it could be implemented coherently and on agreed timescales
• board level communications

By thoroughly reviewing the existing processes and agreeing some changes to it, I could quickly establish a highly robust plan that could be implemented to ensure that from an agreed date all renewals business was compliant.  The revised process was implemented on time and budget. 

As a result of the revised process, there was only a minimal cancellation of renewal business, less than 0.5%.  Customer contact did increase as a result of the mailing but the contact centres were prepared and dealt with queries accordingly.  Regular governance controls are now in place to ensure that both new and renewal business meets the required fulfilment criteria. A recommendation was also presented to the Board that a full review be carried out on other product lines within the wider group.

Value was delivered by;

• clearly mapping the overall process demonstrated to the business where the failings occurred
• mapping the systemic and customer journeys are an effective way of understanding complex processes and make it straight forward to implement improvements
• no significant loss of existing renewal business
• increased confidence of the existing renewal business
• customers were refreshed of their benefits associated with their specific insurance products
• confidence from across the business that such large scale mappings and process reviews and improvements could be undertaken in the future
• best in class cost and service efficiency
• meaningful and actionable governance, KPIs and metrics
• improved resilience and workload management across the wider business
• becoming a genuine true business partner to CEO and more broadly, across the wider group

Pains relieved included;

• lack of the right resource for processes to be reviewed in depth and to highlight any issues 
• overall acceptance of undertaking other business process reviews
• inexperience and an absence of appropriate ways of working

• programme director
• programme management
• insurance
• compliance
• major project
• business process
• process improvement
• Business Operational Design

• Process Effectiveness & Automation
• Accelerated Solution Delivery
• Organisational Agility & Effectiveness