Risk insurance marketing success illustrates principles of project management

Service delivery is a major topic at every project management conference, as it is in every service profession and industry. Professionals have to master the art of managing and monitoring a process to tight turnaround times and quality metrics.

Innovation is often required, and could be learnt from the simplest business processes, as British entrepreneur Richard Branson has demonstrated.

Bureaucracy kills business

Consider an insurance process example.

Banks and life insurers require that home loan and policy applicants undergo medical tests to reduce their risk exposure. Loan approval processes could take up to two months.

Brokers hand medical documents, and initiative, to clients.

Many applications go ‘cold’ and brokers assume that these clients are uninsurable, while some cop out of the hassle of getting their own medical tests documented and returned, or find brokers who design their processes around clients instead of around their ‘in and out’ boxes on their desks and checkpoints at their head office.

Service delivery is about attitude and innovation. Brokers should specialise in turnaround times, streamlined processes, analysis and assessment of client health and wellness.

Buffer management

Some brokers have learnt that service is good business. Their approval turnaround time is a quarter of the industry average.

One team has gained a reputation, and business advantage, by managing most of the buffers and bottlenecks in the process.

They focused on these aspects:

• Saving advisers time regarding salaries – no need to appoint personnel to arrange medical requirements, no overhead costs such as telephones, ink and paper;
• Saving insurance companies’ staff and money by completing back-office work; and
• Saving clients from inconvenience by booking medicals. To those requiring only blood tests and a short medical, they send a travelling nurse, and the rest could be done by a family doctor.

After blood tests, electrocardiograms, lung function tests and full medical examinations, the team personally assisted clients to attend medical appointments, complete forms, and handing their case back to the insurer for underwriting and loan approval.

This team has perfected the art of “buffer management” – delivering client needs in record time.

They focus on service delivery at all platforms of management, instead of designing the process around a desk.

Service project management

With a well-balanced team and an attitude for success, some companies have proven that project management principles apply to any opportunity or threat, and they deliver the required outcomes within time and scope.

Every project has unique obstacles and challenges, but all require an attitude of meeting challenges.

Motivational speaker and author Brian Tracy illustrated project management well: “Make a game of finding something positive in every situation.

“Ninety-five percent of our emotions are determined by how we interpret events to ourselves.” 

Valerie Carmichael-Brown

Chief executive officer

Triniti Business Solutions (Pty) Ltd