Chapter 14 Flashcards
What are the 5 classic managerial functions?
- planning
- organizing
- staffing.
- directing
- controlling.
What are the 3 requirements for effective management planning?
- setting goals
- making decisions on the priority of goals
- anticipation and planning for future events that might affect accomplisments of fials.
Define the criteria of the underwriting goals.
- should be inline with comapny goals
- define understandable terms, with the over-arching corporate goals directly leading to divsiion or business unit goals
- trackable goals
- clear expression
- accepted as reasonable by the employee.
- specific and actionable.
- gials are subject to suboptimization.
Underwriting management can set department goals in what areas?
- mortality results to meeting pricing assumptions
- Time service
- accuracy of risk assessment by underwriters
- productivity
- research and development of risk selection policies and procedures
- participation in industry studies and activities
- employee training and development
- participation in system development and enchancement
- participation in company marketing objectives.
In the operational planning phases, the managers planning role will continue through what?
- estimating necessary resources
- budgeting
- developing and communicating the operational policies that direct activities toward the goals
- establishing measurement methods for goal acheivements.
The underwriting manager can participate in planning for anticipated expenses and mortality. For expenses what can underwriting do?
- determine which underwriting requirement should be obtained by the company
- negotiated vendor agreements
- determine the cost of obtaining and handling u/w requiremetns
- budget for payrolls and salary increases
- determine cost and budgets for employee training and development
- evaluate cost and benefits of allowing u/w to work remotely.
If the u/w manager acts as the chief u/w for technical u/w, he or she can also be asked to do what?
- consult with pricing actuaries to dertmine the relate value of new u/w requirements
- explain and negotiate changes in u/w requirements with RI
- provide data on u/w wuality to compare with pricing assumptions
- evaluate early claims results.
What are the 3 specific types of expense/mortality analysis that can be done by todays’ u/w managers?
protective value analysis
review of tele-underwriting models
evaluation of outsourcing
Define protective value or cost/benefit anaylsys?
the mean by which the value of an age-and-amount requirement to the company is determined.
the cost of obtaning and handling the reuqirement is comapred to the value of the requirement.
How do you do a protective value analysis?
- identify a block of cases on which the selected age and amount requirements have been obtrained
- locate cases in which the requirements has been the source of information that elf to the additional mortality pricing/rating. This is the mortality benefit of the requurement.
- determine the present value of all the extra mortality on the cases that were located, using an actuarial resource and comapny pricing assymptions.
- calculate the expenses of obtaining and processing the age-and-amount requirement on all the cases on which the requirement was received.
- compare the extra mortality (the benefit) to the expenses of obtaining the age-and-amount requirement on all the cases (the cost). IF the mortality benefit exceeds the cost of the requirement, the requirement is said to be provide “protective value”
Depending on the company’s organizational choices, the underwriting manager can have responsibilities in several areas of the tele-underwriting process including what?
- creation and revision of applications forms and “drilled-down” quesiton
- collection and evaluation of protective value data on the tele-underwriting process
- review and validation of the automated risk selection process
- periodic udates to the forms and process.
What is outsourcing?
defined as the performance of a function by individuals not employed by the insurance company.
What are some benefits to outsourcing to the insurance company?
- company is able to hanlde additional work wihtout hiring additional permanent staff
- managers can more easily handle temporary increases in workloads
- vendors can provide automated functions that the insurance company has not developed,
What are some negative factors in terms of outsourcing for the insurance company?1
- managers lose direct control over performance of functions
- there can be a loss of skill set within the insurance company if entire functions are outsourced.
- outsourced funcitons can become more costly than if performed in-house.
What are the responsibilities of the underwriting manager in terms of outsourcing?
- max production capacity of the vendor; vendor capability to handle increased demands
- informaiton security and compliance wiht confidentiality requirement for medical information
- level of traning and background of the outsourced workers.
How to managers priorituze?
the concept of goal prioritization recognizes that the accomplishment of one goal is more important than another at a given point in time.
- priorities shift as the company or the marketplace changes.
Teams in most underwriting departments are structured in one of which two basic designs?
- functional
2. integrates (“cross-functional”)
What happens in a functionally structured department?
those preforming the same or very similar work are often grouped together for manegement and reporting purposes.
What happens in an intefrated team structure?
Includes inviduals from many functional areas who work together on business of a specific type or from a particular source.
-ie seperation per geographic region.
What are the advantages for functional teams.
- ready access to training and guidance from experienced workers
- ability to handle volume flunctuations and re-distribution of work easily
- professional support and role models for advancement provided by the group
- development of expertise in a discipline or function
- easy monitoring of consistency between employees
What are the advantages of an integrated team?
- exposure to a variety of disciplines and processes
- ability to address multi-faceted problems
- engances ability to focues on the customer rather than on the tasks
- facilitation of understanding of the entire business process by each team member
- representation of a variety of skill levels and abilities
In order to determine which structure would be more beneficial the manager needs to assess what?
- comapny marketing strategy and relationship between sales and u/w
- complexity of products solf, and special programs offered
- current mortality results and expected/desired mortality preformance
- number of staff memebers, and their expertise and availability of skilled employees within the company and community.
- quality of communication within the department and the company
- availability of training resources-
- appropriate time frame for transition
A moderate to large-size underwriting department can also include employees dedicated in while or in part to providing staff support for the manager or line underwriters. What are staff functions
- preparation of production or quantitative reports
- creating ad hoc reports for special projects
- research of processing or systems problems
- training underwriters or new business staff
- documentations of policies and procedures
- participation in projects or on inter-deparmental committees.
What are the kinds of multi-location employes?
- remote- those who do not work in a company site
2. multi-location- they work in company office locations but multiple sites.
What are the benefits of offering remote underwriting or multiple site underwriting?
- attracting and retaining underwriters.
- increasing the potential talent pool if the manager is looking for some special skills
- possible increase in productivity.
What are some challanges when managing employees who are remote?
- comminication challenges including no face-to-face interactions, therefore communication is done in writing or over the phone. Coference calls with employees at multiple locations can be used but it can be difficult to assume everyone has understood the information to the same degree.
More frequent meetings may be required to build team rapport and mutual support.
difficult to deliver preformance feedback and conduct performance review meetings with remote underwriters.
When there is no face-to-face there can be difficult communication, mediums can occur over the phone but in these situations the manager should be looking at what?
- the manager should pay close attention to teh employees comments
- the manager should probe to make sure that the preformance review has been understood completely by the employee.
- the manager should be speficially ask for the employees responses to each item in the evaluation and for any questions the employee may have
- careful written documentation of phone coversations that can also be useful particularly if the manager and employee having differing veiws of the employee performance.