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Target Markets Special Section ReSource Pro  “We bring best-in-class solutions to insurance processing. It may not sound sexy, but we can transform the operational capabilities of program managers.” So says Dan Epstein, vice president of business development for ReSource Pro, a company that provides insurance processing support to program managers and wholesalers. Dan says his team is confident they can back these claims.
ReSource Pro emerged as a result of one program manager, Distinguished Programs Group (DPG), facing, and ultimately, overcoming a crisis. In 2003, insurance carrier Kemper, withdrew from the market. DPG suddenly had to cancel and rewrite 13,000 policies, but it did not have the in-house staff to accomplish this. Around this time, a DPG employee, Matthew Bruno, moved to China and began to build a data processing unit there. “It was more an accident than design at first,” said David Watkins, ReSource Pro’s CEO. “One of our top employees was moving to China. We didn’t want to lose him and needed him to help us manage the intense workload. So we asked him to take with him a laptop and find a way to connect it to our system in New York.” What grew out of those humble beginnings became the backbone of DPG’s data processing infrastructure, according to Andy Potash, chairman and CEO of DPG. “It took us a while to figure out many of the technical issues of linking up our systems, and then a while longer to figure out what kinds of tasks we could send out to the team in China. Now the question is what processing tasks can’t we send out there?” Andy’s question came from a realization that, what started out as a solution to a specific problem, ended up presenting a profound new opportunity: to transform DPG into the “office of the future,” one that was increasingly “paperless” and had functions “distributed” between different national and international locations, based on cost, efficiency and effectiveness criteria. In this manner, DPG has been able materially to improve its responsiveness in many areas of client service, including such impact areas as quote turnaround time (24 hours or less) and policy issuance (95% issued within 24 hours), according to Andy. He says that at the heart of ReSource Pro’s value proposition is the quality of staff that Matthew Bruno, now director of operations in China, has been able to hire. ReSource Pro’s Chinese employees are all university graduates with fluent English skills. With fewer job opportunities in China for knowledgeable workers, ReSource Pro has been able to hire bright, motivated employees to do administrative tasks that many U.S.-based underwriters, salespeople and even administrative people cringe at doing, Bruno says. Matt believes this is just the beginning. “Our people are not just smart. We train them to understand the U.S. insurance industry, agency management systems and the broad spectrum of processing issues. That’s why we react so quickly and turn around policies and projects so quickly and accurately.” After Matt’s processing unit in China dealt with the Kemper fallout and started taking on more and more of the administrative burden off DPG underwriters and salespeople, it became clear to DPG that this kind of service was so powerful that other program managers could also benefit from it. “When we began to tally up the benefits, we realized we were on to something,” says Andy. “We were a growing company. ReSource Pro enabled us to grow without overburdening our teams with data processing and double entry. Previously, we found it tough to hire good people who were willing to spend their apprenticeship doing data entry. By shifting processing tasks to our data unit in China, our people at home could focus on driving more business and doing higher value work activities. We were able to do more business while saving substantially on employee churn, training and costly new hires.” Dan Epstein argues that ease of implementation is one of ReSource Pro’s key competitive advantages. “One of our strengths is that we use our clients’ IT systems, so they don’t need to build fancy new systems just to work with us. We obtain remote access to their servers, so that while our people are typing up their tasks in China, the information never leaves our client’s hard drive in the U.S. That gives them peace of mind and leaves us to concentrate on continuously improving workflow efficiencies.” ReSource Pro now has six clients, including The Lighthouse Companies, Automotive Risk Management and Insurance Services, NIP Group and Parks & Associates. One client, Paul Hanson Partners, which manages a transportation program called Mover’s Choice uses ReSource Pro team members for a broad range of administrative tasks, including requesting, reviewing and summarizing MVRs and entering driver information in their agency management system. * |
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