Royal & SunAlliance Provides Browser-Based Access to Claims With WebFOCUS
Snapshot
| Organization Royal & SunAlliance Insurance Company of Canada. |
| Profile One of Canada's top three insurance companies. |
| Headquarters Toronto, Ontario, Canada. |
| The Challenge Deliver real-time claims information to customers and provide them with additional analytical capabilities. |
| The Results Developed a Web-based system that lets major customers access claims information, view custom reports and charts, and download data over the Internet. |
| Information Builders Solution FOCUS and WebFOCUS. |
Not many of us enjoy paying insurance premiums. That goes for large companies trying to control costs, as well as for families.
Insurance companies are working in a tough, competitive market, especially when many of their customers are themselves large companies with hard-nosed financial specialists who are constantly comparing prices and services. It's a struggle not only to compete for new business, but to hold on to their current book of business.
A unique, Web-based service is giving Royal & SunAlliance Insurance Company of Canada, which handles more than $1 billion a year in premiums and has more than $3 billion in assets, a way to set itself apart from the competition.
Royal & SunAlliance's largest customers have unprecedented access to information about their insurance claims with a system that delivers real-time information from the insurance company's mainframes to the customer's desktop PC.
From Paper to Browser
Royal & SunAlliance's traditional reports for its corporate customers are stacks of paper, delivered on a monthly basis. Insurance administrators at the companies then wade through the bulky reports, extracting information about claims, and hoping that the data will deliver critical information about their policies.
But the risk management group at Royal & SunAlliance wanted more and better tools, both for themselves and for customers.
They wanted instant, real-time access to claims information. The ability to see the big picture as well as drill down for details. Data they can download to conduct their own analysis. Graphs and visual tools, as well as tables. Special reports to identify trends and exceptions.
Thanks to WebFOCUS from Information Builders, they're getting all that and more.
Royal & SunAlliance's new Web-based customer tool, dubbed CASi, for Claims Analysis System on the Internet, gives large customers secure, real-time access to their claims information.
The data is stored in an IBM DB2 database running on a mainframe using the OS/390 operating system. The company uses FOCUS from Information Builders to manage the vast amounts of data on its mainframe.
To make that data available over the Internet, Royal & SunAlliance linked IBM's Distributed Data Connection Service to a Compaq Web server running Microsoft's Windows NT and Internet Information Server (IIS). WebFOCUS was used to link the Web server and the mainframe data, outputting custom reports for customers accessing the server through a secure connection to their desktop PC.
FOCUS Skills Made It Easy
WebFOCUS was the perfect tool for delivering data to the Internet, says Larry Allin, Leader, Management Information Centre, at Royal & SunAlliance. The company's rich skill set in FOCUS made programming for the Web easy in WebFOCUS.
"We were firmly entrenched in FOCUS on our mainframe," Allin says. "We already had a firm knowledge of the language and how it worked with our data, how to write reports, and how to relate reports to each other."
In fact, while real-time database access ranks as one of the more difficult Web-development projects for anyone, WebFOCUS made it the easiest part of the seven-month project for Royal & SunAlliance.
"The most difficult part was scaling up our Web server, which had been delivering just brochureware, basic corporate information," Allin notes. "We had to learn how to run a more serious server, how to handle security and firewalls. That took much more time than developing the application itself."
While applications like Microsoft's Visual Basic or Visual InterDev could have been used, employing those technologies would have meant a steep and unwelcome learning curve for Royal & SunAlliance, and would have slowed development time.
WebFOCUS built on the company's existing skills, and the investment continues to pay off. As customers request new types of reports on their claims, Royal & SunAlliance technical staff can turn projects around quickly with WebFOCUS.
Detail When You Need It
CASi has two major elements: inquiry and analysis.
The inquiry portion lets the customer view claims information. Customers can view high-level data, such as how many claims were made, paid, recovered, and declined over a given period of time. But they can drill down further, exploring claims by policy number all the way to viewing an image of the actual check that went to the claimant.
"Customers have never been able to get that much detail before, not from the summary level down to the last detail," says Allin.
While paper reports are delivered in tabular form, the Web version delivers tables, images, charts, and graphs, leveraging the graphic powers of FOCUS itself.
Analysis Sets It Apart
The second part of the application is the analysis function, which gives customers sophisticated, customized reports about their claims.
Customers work with Royal & SunAlliance to define the information they want to see and how it should be organized. Royal & SunAlliance information analysts then use WebFOCUS to write and test the code to deliver the report as requested. Within a few days of their request, customers can click on their new report to get the latest view of their information.
Customers can group their claims by codes identifying specific types of loss, and can spot trends or exceptions, or identify trouble spots, much earlier than ever.
"With the paper reports, it could be 30 days before you found out that someone was being paid a certain amount," Allin says. "Now, they can come in on a day-by-day basis and see what they paid out yesterday. They can make changes much quicker and be more apprised of what is going on."
Customers who want to do their own analysis of their data can also download raw data to crunch on their own computers, a feature Royal & SunAlliance of Canada could never offer before.
While the system saves work for Royal & SunAlliance of Canada, its real value is to the customers.
"This really sets us apart in the market," says Allin. "We're not printing all these reports. Customers aren't working with old information, and they're able to get their answers immediately."
Building for the Future
About a dozen of Royal & SunAlliance's customers now use CASi, and Allin estimates that it could be useful to about 100 customers.
Those who benefit most from the project are large customers who have hundreds of claims a year. They need summaries of their claims, and value the ability to get any level of detail they like, or to analyze relationships and trends in their claims.
"We're not measuring the success of this project by volume or hits on our Web server," says Allin. "The enhanced customer relationships are what are important to us. People consider remarketing their insurance all the time, and we think CASi will help them recognize the value of staying with us."
The company now shows the service to potential new customers, and believes CASi has been a significant factor in winning some new accounts.
A second version of the software, now in the works, will have additional features. The company has also started to incorporate detailed risk information from the customer, permitting even more powerful analytical capabilities.
