Here's your February update of the Acadia Innovation newsletter, your consolidated source for new innovation happenings at Acadia Insurance. Browse below to learn more!
Check out the results and ndings from the Accelerated Advantage Quote Entry Experiment on page 1.
Episode two of The Edge podcast for season three is now available. This podcast is an interview with Christoph Ritterson at Berkley One talking about how Berkley One has worked innovation into their business strategy
Find out why it is important to Mary Ordway to be actively engaged in Acadia's innovation efforts.
Answer an innovation question for the chance to win a prize!
Learn more about self-management and nd resources to become certi ed in this behavior on the last page.
February
In prior editions of this newsletter, we have mentioned the Accelerated Advantage Quote Entry experiment. As a reminder, here is more information of what this experiment was testing:
Wehearfromagentsthattheyhavesta ngandresourceconstraintsandthatouronlineratingsystemisapainpoint.Wealso hearconsistentlythatagentspreferaquickresponse(eveninadeclinescenario).Thisideaseekstomaximizethee ciencyand resourceutilizationofouragentteammembersandourAICemployees.Ultimately,wefeelthatby:
A.Reducingtheagentstimeandefforttogetaquote,
B.ChangingUnderwriterbehaviortofocusonrapidresponsetoeachsubmission,and
C.Allinvolveddepartmentsfocusingonfastresponse(stillturningthequotearoundwithin72hours*)
Ourexperimentdesignincludingalignmentbetweenoperations,rating,andunderwritingtoturnaroundquoteswithin72hours. Wehaveidenti edtwoAdvantageUnderwriterstobepartoftheexperiment,andtrackedtheirsubmissionactivity.
*72Hourswasdeterminedasfollows:24hoursforImagingtoindex;24hoursforinitialevaluation/annotation&rating;24hours fortheunderwritertoreviewandmakeconnectionwiththeagent.
For the month of December, 56 submissions were tracked which is the total number of emailed (aka paper) submissions received by the two test Underwriters. These 56 submissions were handled following the work ow that was developed for the experiment. The results were as follows:
The hit ratio for the test submissions was 48%, compared with 2023 year end numbers of 51%. While our hypothesis did not play out, we did recognize that the Decline to Submitted ratio was roughly 15% lower than the 2023 year end percentage as well as the Quoted to Submitted ratio which was 30% higher than the 2023 year end percentage (all Underwriters). When focusing on the Decline and Quote ratios for just the two test Underwriters in the experiment, they both experienced a similar result (decline less, quote more). The group felt that this matched speci c agent feedback, which is that they want quick responses from Underwriters following a submission, better understanding the Underwriter interest and attitude towards writing the business. They felt that ultimately, over time if we can change Underwriter behavior to work on submissions by create date (as opposed to effective date), and continue to respond early (within 72 hours), we will get more quotes on the table and in the long run write more new business (assuming we maintain the current hit ratio).
After speaking to both Underwriting and Rating participants, the group felt that in order to iterate on this experiment, they need to focus on Underwriters who today have a higher percentage of paper submissions from their agents (than MAQ). They will also need to make sure they have the rating resources allocated to this way of working.
Overall, this experiment was deemed successful, and the team will be expanding the work process to 5 Small Business Underwriters for 2024. They anticipate the rollout of this work ow process/behavior to result in an additional $875,000 in New Business Premium written for these 5 Underwriters over a 12 month period.
Season three of Berkley's "The Edge" Podcast is back up and running. Click on the episode description below to take a listen:
This episode features Berkley One's Senior Vice President of Marketing and Distribution and Innovation Leader, Christoph Ritterson. Christoph and Bill discuss how Berkley One has worked to embed innovation into their business strategy and the sometimes di cult road that got them there. They address how to keep moving forward in the face of failure during experimentation, and the value of using your team to protect people against burn out by sharing the process. Christoph provides a peek behind the curtain into the innovation leader collaboration meetings, where there is the advantage of borrowing ideas that solve problems you may have otherwise been too trapped by your own biases to develop.
We are continuing to highlight Acadia team members that are (the most) actively engaged in SPARK! The next active SPARK! user is Mary Ordway, Manager Home O ce Underwriting Operations. We askedMary:
Why is it important to you to be actively engaged in Acadia’s Innovation efforts?
"When I think about being innovative all these thoughts run through my mind!
Innovation lends itself to challenging the status quo and embracing change. Do I have to be creative to be innovative?
Where do I nd innovation?
Does hard work drive an much innovation as creativity?
As a facilitator of the Service Squad and the Spark moderator for Operational E ciency I see impressive innovative ideas all the time. These ideas are impressive! They are varied between system and process improvements. Often these ideas come from day-to-day activities that impact employees as a source of annoyance or frustration. They usually identify something that could be changed to make the job easier, or more e cient or effective. Often, they will inspire small process changes or some slight tweak to a process that alleviates a headache. It always makes me happy if I can make a small incremental improvement that improves someone's day-to-day work life! Keep those ideas coming!
We had 6 employees correctly answer our last Knowledge Check questions, but Ryan Capponi was our lucky winner! Ryan, please be on the lookout for your prize shortly
Answer our next Knowledge Check question to win a special prize! Click on the green button to the left to submit your answer.
Next Knowledge Check: How many independent companies does Bill Rodhe say that W. R. Berkley has in season three, episode two's The Edge Podcast?
As part of our Innovation journey, we continue to work on the seven innovation behaviors to strengthen our knowledge and skill sets. We will highlight an innovation behavior each newsletter and provide links and information on where you can learn more about this behavior.
The rst behavior we will highlight is managing self. Self-management and the control that we exercise over our emotions and our actions is the foundation for the seven essential innovation behaviors. With self-management comes the con dence to be better at not knowing than knowing. That will allow us to be fully engaged in and open to all the possibilities that surround us; to listening and learning from others from our experiences, without judgment and without ego.
Resources:
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• Managing Self Video
Managing Self iLab Page
As a reminder, you can use the Give A WOW platform to recognize your coworkers that have you've noticed exhibiting innovation behaviors. The innovation behaviors are the last seven options under the Nomination Category.