i-Mark International Industry Solutions

PRODUCTS SECTION

i-Mark provides Business services to clients, but it also addresses industry problems directly.  We create turn-key and innovative answers to common issues, problems and profit opportunities.

Basic information on some of these industry-focused products is listed this PRODUCTS SECTION.  Contact us for greater details on any other industry or business issues not currently displayed in this PRODUCTS SECTION.

UNDERWRITING PROFITABILITY

Insurers are finding the current world economy is requiring that a practice that had been a cornerstone skill in the industry for decades be re-instituted – RISK UNDERWRITING and “underwriting for a profit” are now priority projects for most Insurance Organizations.

The practice of risk underwriting is not new and the industry has for centuries formulated methods of evaluating and sharing risks so that Insurers can cover losses and make reasonable profits.  However, in the past 35 years, there has been a widespread change in the techniques that Insurers have used to obtain company profitability.  During this time the emphasis by insurers was to underwrite for premium and use financial investment portfolios to generate the additional income necessary for corporate profits.  Techniques required for producing positive underwriting results took a backseat to the concept of premium generation.  The “Market-Set premium rates” which were based on account desirability with Insurance Company created Risk Portfolio Volatility as a result.  Stability in a company’s financial situation was left to Wall Street performance and the effect that its investments had on corporate financials to stabilize an Insurer’s Annual Report even when underwriting risk performance alone was at a significant loss.

Insurers today are faced with a scramble for re-instituting long un-enforced underwriting practices that have been effectively abandoned during the past “Financially Driven” industry time period.

While re-installing these practices seem simple enough,  the current state of the Insurance Industry makes  this practice much more demanding.  A variety of factors now apply to a Company’s Insurance Underwriting and each of these factors requires attention.

Over the same period where Financial Portfolios were emphasized over Risk Portfolios, the Insurance Industry generally abandoned “in-house” tutoring of effective underwriting practices.  For the most part, employee insurance education was left to the individuals within the company.  Very little of the formal underwriting knowledge accumulated by each company over hundreds of years was transferred to new employees.  The in-house knowledge transfer that was common for years was replaced by individual initiatives that promoted general insurance knowledge.  Industry Knowledge transfer was now the job of Industry agencies that provided professional designations.  The combination of minimal on-the-job training and personal pursuit of industry skills was the accepted method of “seasoning” employees to the topical issues that are essential for an effective underwriting process.

While this has provided the industry with SOME highly effective persons in the area of Risk Underwriting, both the quality and quantity of underwriting skill is below what is needed today to re-instate “Profit-Driven” Underwriting Practices on an Industry-wide scale.

In addition to an under-resourced underwriting talent pool, the underwriting process has become much more complicated than in the past.  Additionally, it is reasonable to assume that effective underwriting practices will become progressively more complex for the foreseeable future.  This is a result of the increase in the complexity of our world society and the escalating values that the public wants to and needs to insure.

Risk factors in a modern policy environment cover multiple physical and legal factors that have not existed at the levels that exist today.  More factors to consider in risk evaluation mean more effort spent on the risk evaluation process.  In addition to risk factor increases, there are increases in expected loss exposures as the result of increasing population densities and socially influences legal responsibilities.  Insurers must now factor these new complexities into their “old” risk evaluation practices if they are to re-implement effective underwriting activities

With a gap in company generated underwriting knowledge and a world insurance environment that becomes more difficult daily, how will Insurers meet the challenge of re-installing effective underwriting capabilities at the company level?

The answer is a combination of past underwriting practices, modern information technology and innovation – the ability to see beyond the obvious.

Insurers need a new toolset of technology-based practices that use industry and policy data to drive underwriting activities back to profitability.  To accomplish this, the technology tools utilize must be drive by a DEEP understanding of prior insurance underwriting practices and a complementary understanding of the Knowledge Technologies that can most effectively expand the underwriting process into the more complex format required by today’s Insurance environment.

THE SOLUTION

i-Mark International has worked with the Insurance Industry for over 30 years and i-Mark International staff has been responsible for innovating numerous technology-based solutions to the problem of effective underwriting.  These solutions have always been based upon a core of Insurance Underwriting and Risk Management Knowledge.  The solutions developed have always been ‘Culturally Adjusted”  - meaning that the toolsets provided are individualized to the internal skills, knowledge and risk needs of the Insurers that utilize them. 

i-Mark is dedicated to preserving the individuality of each Insurance Company by this customization process.  Unfortunately, the drive towards cost efficiency in all aspects of Insurance operations has led to Information Technology-based solutions that remove the individual risk practices of the installed company.  While this is not always a bad thing, it does cause some companies to lose the competitive edge they may have in their respective general markets.

The i-Mark toolsets are very sensitive to this fact and avoid this side-effect by being engineered to adapt to existing company underwriting practices and risk portfolios.  Our approach is to create “side-car” tools that enhance the existing systems that exist in a company and to integrate these tools into a highly efficient support capability that can improve Underwriting Performance without the time and expense of large system component replacements.

i-Mark addresses the need for effective underwriting by focusing on key components of the underwriting process:

1. “True World” Risk Evaluation – this is our adaptive risk-driven evaluation process that uses existing Policy Management Systems data to drive an evaluation methodology that is adapted to each Insurer’s current situation.  The technologies used are “resource efficient” (both time and money invested) and scalable from the Smallest “Table-top” Insurer to the Multi-national Giants.
2. Risk Exposure Pricing Evaluator – this is the sophisticated Risk Component-based calculator used to evaluate pure risk-based pricing. 
   The results of this process is the premium due on the risk due to the risk exposures alone.  This provides the underwriter with the pure
   premium of exposure.  This Evaluator is adjusted to the level of risk information that is available within each company environment and corporate culture.
3. Portfolio Risk Management – this is the policy/risk-based system that is utilized to establish the desirability of accounts within the entire Insurer’s risk Portfolio.  It provides the ability to better allocate resources for renewal processing and serves as a platform for “what-if” risk portfolio changes.
4. Catastrophe Management – i-Mark is one of the few Industry members that supports a Scenario-based analysis of Catastrophe Exposures.  By utilizing a multiple engine structure in its estimate calculations i-Mark’s process of CAT management can accommodate a variety of individualized underwriting and risk engineering approaches which insures a more accurate estimate of real financial exposure to Catastrophe perils.
5. Risk Balanced Reinsurance – this is capability is the result of i-Mark’s attention to the complete Risk Management process.  As a result of utilizing i-Mark Risk Management toolset, the approach to Reinsurance for a Risk Portfolio can be dramatically modified.  This modification can result in new approaches to Risk Transfer and Reinsurance program characteristics that protects both the Primary Carrier and those Reinsurance Facilities involved in that carriers support.

CONTACT i-Mark International for specific details on any of the Risk Management tools listed above. Underwriting Profitability can be dramatically strengthened by implementing these company customized tools within the required constraints of time and resources required in today’s insurance environment.