2013 GRC Value Award: Insurance & Claims Management
GRC 20/20 Research awarded Riskonnect RMIS and the State of Utah its 2013 GRC Value award in the Insurance & Claims Management category. Riskonnect RMIS’s fully automated insurance risk management software platform addresses insurance claims, litigation, exposure, and policy management.
The Utah Division of Risk Management (DRM) chose Riskonnect RMIS (risk management information system) to replace its legacy vendor's basic claim system. Within one year of implementation of Riskonnect RMIS the Utah DRM estimates it saved $1 million on reconciliation of insurance premium billing, and saw an 82 percent increase in efficiency in processing high dollar payments. Other short-term gains included:
- High-dollar payment process reduced from 17.1 days to one day
- Bill processing (acceptance/authorization/payment) reduced form 29.3 days to two days
- Complete integration of relevant risk data removed need for five hours per week of reconciliation between source systems
- Consolidation of the contact database produced significant reduction in resources because if its consistent, accurate linking to appropriate contacts for all risk-related activities
- Reduced time to generate current risk status reports and reduced travel time to home office, with remote Web access to risk system
- Reduction in fees for redundant systems of over $30,000
During the next five years, because of its Riskonnect RMIS implementation, the Utah DRM expects:
- More effective management and response to risk-related issues
- Improved ability to make decisions about risk, based on real data, not estimates
- Continued cost savings and efficiencies due to ongoing and expanded use of the Riskonnect RMIS system
The previous solution
The State of Utah Risk Fund managed by the State of Utah DRM insures State government agencies, school districts, institutions of higher education and charter schools. The fund insures more than $28 billion worth of property, 7,000 buildings, 13,000 vehicles and liability coverage for over 120,000 employees. The division also offers claims adjusting, loss control services, insurance procurement and policy management.
Before the Riskonnect implementation, Utah’s Risk Management division managed the process via a legacy system with limited functionality with multiple sets of disparate data. The system was incomplete and expensive.
Riskonnect RMIS, a comprehensive risk management work platform, includes a central repository to house previously separate databases and to easily incorporate workflow and automate business processes into the system. Qualitatively, the Riskonnect system provides substantially greater levels of confidence in the data and related processes. In addition, the reputation of the user group with its stakeholders is enhanced substantially because of the huge reduction in processing times. Additional savings continue to accrue.
New speed and agility and best of all, better data
The speed of responding appropriately to a wide range of risk related activities has greatly enhanced the reputation and support for the Utah DRM. In addition, the substantial increase in the quality of the related risk data has meant the negotiations with mitigation providers has been far better with significant savings in effort and price.
Being able to provide quality data for decision-making has been a huge benefit. Utah DRM has been able to provide its insured entities and other interested stakeholders in real-time loss data that has been critical in management policies and priorities. Loss control activities can be targeted towards specific and current trends and audit queries are processed seamlessly.
The new system has given rise to new levels of agility. For instance, today changes in configuration can occur during a conference call — particularly changes in system reports. This means the Utah DRM can respond much more quickly and accurately than previously. Flexibility and ease of most system changes has been a significant benefit.
To the Utah DRM, the greatest strengths of the current approach is the new accuracy and consistency produced by integrated workflow, its built-in validation rules and the approval processes. Going forward, it expects resources can be freed up to focus more on risk decisions and less on day-to-day reconciliations.
To learn more about the GRC 20/20 2013 GRC Value Awards and other recipients, please visit this post: GRC 20/20 Announces 2013 GRC Value Award Recipients