An article in Risk Management Magazine called "The War on Error: Human Errors as a Strategic Management Concern," reveals that common and preventable errors can rob organizations of resources. Not only do errors have the potential to increase losses and reduce profits, they also have the potential to leak out of your company and cause damage to your hard-won reputation and company brand.
To understand the potential gravity of these errors, consider the example of the health industry. About ten years ago, the Institute of Medicine reported that up to 98,000 deaths a year occur as a result of human errors. That tally is just for the United States. If those numbers are still true, it would make getting hospitalized one of the leading American causes of death. Besides the terrible human cost, it surely doesn't reflect well on U.S. health systems.
How Does Human Error Impact Commercial Insurance Renewals?
Typical companies have to pull renewal submission data from a variety of sources. These might include other computer systems, spreadsheets, and even emails and physical files. Most of this data has to get transferred via a manual process that is time consuming, and incredibly error prone.
One likely result of a manual process is an interruption in the renewal process as errors get discovered. Even worse, these errors many never get caught. This could result in companies getting the wrong amount or type of coverage, or simply paying more than they need to. For example, if figures in GBP get converted manually and incorrectly to USD, or a property value gets incorrectly entered as $100,000 when it should be $1,000,000, it is likely that insurance quotes and policies will be wrong too.
Preventing Human Error in the Commercial Insurance Renewal Process
The cure for human error is advanced technology that streamlines the process, reduces errors, and makes data much easier to audit. Information can get entered at the source, be it land managers or shop foremen, and they can use an intuitive interface that validates and coverts data as it gets entered. Risk and financial managers have the ability to generate powerful reports that can help them audit the real-time information that various departments supply. Finally, this very same information may get passed on to insurance brokers and underwriters in a very quick and efficient way when it comes time to renew coverage.
Accurate information for insurance renewals could become a strength within your company instead of a weakness. At Ventiv Technology, our RMIS system and Claims Administration System have been helping our clients reduce errors and save their companies from losses, injuries, and bad press for decades. Request a demo of our RMIS to see how we can help make your data better.
