Promise Keeping Meets Trouble in Claims: Strategy-integrated Metrics at Assa Compañia de Seguros
The case of Assa Compañia de Seguros illustrates how strategy-integrated metrics can refocus operational resources to the areas of greatest customer impact.
Using the Big Picture framework, Assa Compañia de Seguros, the largest Panamanian insurance company, decided to position itself around keeping promises to its customers, or “cumplimiento.“ Several months into the implementation process, the company took a long hard look at the balanced scorecard metrics they had in place.
In a balanced scorecard environment, getting paper policies to customers was equally weighted to paying claims quickly and responsively. However, customer perception surveys unveiled that policy holders did not place great importance on getting their policies quickly because their brokers provided them with a certificate of insurance as soon as they received approval from the underwriting department. Qualitative and quantitative customer research unveiled that claims were an issue. Customers perceived the claims process to be too slow and “cumplimiento” in claims to be below average.
In a “Assa Cumple” environment, operational metrics were prioritized, giving claims more urgency and focus than policy issuance.