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OPERATING AND FINANCIAL REVIEW / THE COMPANY / DELIVERING VALUE /
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DAVID HARRIS OPERATIONS DIRECTOR
“There is tremendous scope in the London market to
improve performance in important areas which should really
enhance client service as well as Amlin’s potential. This
belief is at the heart of our drive to deliver the best
infrastructure in the market.”
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Increasing Amlin’s attractiveness as a leading
underwriter and playing a leadership role in
the process improvements which can increase
the overall attractiveness of the Lloyd’s and
London market requires investment in
infrastructure. Investment is aimed at
improving performance and increasing
our capacity to handle growth in the
business over the long term.
A 2004 survey of London market insurers
by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, revealed an
approximate average range for 2004 IT
spend of 6.6% to 9.7%, as a proportion of
total expenditure, excluding outsourced and
staff costs. Amlin’s comparable figure against
this range was 9.3%.
During 2004 Amlin has made large strides in
a number of areas which will contribute to the
future resilience of the Group and help it
deliver its long term ambitions.
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| AMLIN INFRASTRUCTURE AND CAPABILITY |
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In recognition of the gathering pace of change
in our market, Amlin continued to invest in
2004 in its Programme and Project Management
team and techniques so that it is well
equipped to manage change, extract benefits
from this change and maintain a leadership
position in service and efficiency to
complement its underwriting excellence.
With data remaining such a critical element
of risk pricing and control, we continued to
develop our data warehouse during 2004. Full
gross premium and claims analysis capabilities
were rolled out across our London market
operations and should be available to all areas
of the Group by September 2005. Our data
warehouse is a key part of our strategy to
provide the best quality information to our
underwriters and claims teams in a timely
manner to support decision making.
Amlin also introduced a new workflow system
during 2004. Known as “WASP”, the system
provides full workflow and scanning functionality,
allowing faster turnaround at key stages of our
underwriting processes, increased process
control and a detailed audit trail which will
aid our ambitions to deliver contract certainty
at the earliest opportunity. Building on the
success of this for underwriting processes
we are now turning our attention to its use
in claims management and other areas.
We are well advanced in the development of
a replacement, known as Genus, to our UK
commercial systems which is intended to
further consolidate systems while improving
information, control and client service. We are
also consolidating the underwriting systems
for our marine service company operations
and have invested in a more resilient platform,
Voyager. Each of these developments
will reduce cost and increase capability.
We continued to develop our business continuity
planning with simulated walk throughs of a
number of potential disaster scenarios by our
crisis management team resulting in improved
clarity in a number of areas. Additionally we
have measured the state of our planning against
best practice standards and are in the process
of applying for accreditation with the PAS56
compliance standard.
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| PROCESS MANAGEMENT |
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Operational scorecards, introduced for the first
time in 2003, have been improved and have
contributed to the attainment of higher
performance standards in a number of areas.
34 process key performance indicators are
now measured with, on average, over 37%
recording improvements on prior month
performance over the course of 2004.
In 2004 we embarked on a review of our claims
organisation and processes. Based on our work
to date we believe there is considerable scope
for profit enhancement through investing in our
claims capabilities. In doing so we will also be
aiming to differentiate our standards of client
service where we lead.
With the FSA’s stated requirement for contract
certainty at risk inception within two years, we
will also be revisiting our plans and strategy in
this regard. Having already made progress in
tracking and turning around contract wordings,
and with our experience in workflow
management, we believe we are as well
placed as any in the London market to
progress towards this objective.
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