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TECHNOLOGY The night shift ReSource Pro helps MGAs add hours to their day By Nancy Doucette
Uh-oh. Fifteen thousand D&O policies to rewrite and three months to do it. That was the task that confronted New York City-based Distinguished Programs several years ago when the carrier that underwrote the program went bankrupt. At about the same time, Matt Bruno, one of the top underwriters at Distinguished Programs, an insurance wholesaler, realized his dream of moving to China. But Bruno wasn’t actually leaving Distinguished Programs. In China, Bruno discovered that he could connect via the Internet directly to the Distinguished Programs system the same way that anyone would connect from the road. He recruited some local college graduates to assist him in processing some of the accounts he was working on. His new hires learned the processes quickly and were precise in carrying out their duties. This led Bruno to think about what other tasks they might be able to help with. It wasn’t long before Distinguished Programs reviewed its processes and procedures to identify routine tasks that could be sent to Bruno and his Chinese team. And it wasn’t long after that that the formal China operation, based in Qingdao, was established. The scene changes to Napa, California, where Paul Hanson Partners (PHP) is based. Since opening its doors in 1993, the agency has specialized in insurance for the transportation industry. In 1998, PHP established a program administration division and created a property and casualty program for moving and storage companies called Mover’s Choice, underwritten by AIG. “Our company has grown between 18% and 25% for the last five years,” notes Lisa Paul, president and CEO of Paul Hanson Partners. Growth at that pace had created a considerable backlog of work, necessitating lots of overtime, which heightened the risk of staff burn-out. Finding additional staff was no easy undertaking. “Napa isn’t a major metropolitan area. Good people are hard to find,” she points out. “The challenges associated with managing, recruiting, and training, in addition to implementing and expanding our programs are all significant hurdles. Real estate is expensive but given our growth, I needed to expand into larger quarters.” In 2004, Paul was sharing her frustrations with her program manager at AIG who mentioned how Distinguished Programs had set up a remote operation in China to handle some back office support functions for their program management. Paul wasted no time getting in touch with Distinguished Programs. Paul’s intense interest in what Distinguished Programs had done helped them realize that there were opportunities in providing remote staffing to other MGAs and program managers. And so it was that ReSource Pro℠ came into being. In her conversations with the then-fledgling ReSource Pro, Lisa Paul learned that her agency’s workflows would need to be documented and processes would have to be mapped and refined. Once that was done, the information would be sent to the project leader in Qingdao for testing. Additionally, the China-based team would use the password that Paul provided to test their access to the Paul Hanson Partners server and management system. She also learned how beneficial the time difference between California and China could be. “When it’s 5 p.m. in California, it’s 9 a.m. the next day in China. So when we’re going home, our Chinese employees are coming on board. It’s like having a night shift,” she says. Another benefit that Paul would learn about later is that the Chinese employees don’t celebrate Christmas. That meant that while PHP was closed for the Christmas/New Year holidays, the “night shift” was still on the job. And when the Chinese New Year rolled around (the dates vary each year between January 21 and February 19 and the holiday lasts for several days), activities at PHP are slow. A confluence of events In the same timeframe, PHP was acting on an earlier decision to convert to a terminal server system, migrate to a completely paperless environment, and upgrade to dual screen monitors. “All this enabled us to have employees anywhere in the world,” Paul points out. Within weeks of her initial conversations with ReSource Pro, she was getting acquainted with Patty, PHP’s team leader in China. Paul decided to begin with simple tasks—for instance, logging submissions into the AIG clearance system, running a credit report, getting MVRs on every driver, or ordering a Marshall/Swift report—tasks that she describes as “the underwriting prep processes that have to be done before the account even hits an underwriter’s desk.” Within about 30 days, she says, Patty had worked through the backlog. “Then it became a question of ‘What can we be forward-thinking about’,” Paul recalls. So she began considering more complex processes, such as those that are handled by an underwriter or assistant underwriter. On the retail side of the operation, Paul explains, the Chinese employees send out a submission to multiple markets to get quotes. As the quotes come in, the Chinese employees analyze them and put the variances on a spreadsheet. “Sometimes underwriters provide limits other than those we requested,” she notes. “Perhaps the building limit has been transposed—we requested $3.2 million but they quoted $2.3 million, for instance. Or there are differences in the deductibles, coverage forms, or attachments to the forms. The Chinese workers confirm whether the coverages quoted match the coverages requested on the app. The Chinese workers have no interruptions. There are no phones ringing. As a matter of fact, there are no phones on their desks.” Paul reports that the Chinese workers also satisfy insured requests for loss runs. “Most of our insurance companies have that information available through an Internet request system. The Chinese workers pull down the loss run, attach a loss summary, do an Excel spreadsheet for the customer, and pump it back out to the customer either by e-mail or fax. “Naturally, we tested the Chinese employees before giving them this level of responsibility. The work they’ve produced has been flawless. We now we have over 100 processes that ReSource Pro handles for us. As we added processes, we hired more Chinese workers. We now have 14. What separates ReSource Pro from anyone else in this space is that the 14 people who work for us in Asia are the same 14 people every day. These individuals aren’t temps. They’re trained extensively in Paul Hanson Partner’s processes before they come on board.” If Lisa Paul sounds enthusiastic about ReSource Pro, she is. She’s so enthusiastic, she created a remote staffing division through which she provides consulting services to agencies that want to go paperless and ultimately wish to use ReSource Pro’s services. She’s also introducing ReSource Pro’s services to her moving and storage clients. “I figured if it could work for me, it could work for my customers,” she remarks. “It’s had a profound impact on my customers. It’s providing a value-added component that certainly transcends the insurance policy. It definitely strengthens our relationship with our customer base.”
Square one Paul Hanson Partners was ReSource Pro’s first client. In fact, when Lisa Paul first contacted Distinguished Programs in 2004, they were just beginning to see how other MGAs and program administrators might benefit from using remote workers to handle back office functions. According to Dan Epstein, vice president of business development for ReSource Pro, using remote workers frees producers and underwriters from doing back office work, meaning that they can be on the phone to clients, developing new business, and providing real-time customer service. For Distinguished Programs, using remote workers also meant that it didn’t have to expand its office space when it increased its staff. Epstein notes that office space in New York City where Distinguished Programs is located is extremely expensive. Similarly, real estate in Napa, California, is pricey. Thanks to ReSource Pro, PHP didn’t have to expand its quarters either. “This approach has an impact on the top line because organizations can chase more business,” he explains, “but it also impacts the bottom line because people and real estate are significant expense items. “ReSource Pro focuses on the small to medium-sized companies,” Epstein points out. “Like Distinguished Programs, these types of organizations are struggling with commission pressure and margin pressure. They don’t have the resources to build their own off-shore entity and they’re not looking to downsize.” Epstein emphasizes: “What ReSource Pro does isn’t traditional outsourcing. We’re going to learn our clients’ system. We’re going to map out our clients’ processes and procedures. We become their remote staff. What sets us apart from our competition is our willingness to adapt to existing workflows, systems, and procedures. That affords a huge level of comfort to organizations that are stretched pretty thin. “Getting started with ReSource Pro is remarkably simple to implement. There’s almost no upfront cost to get started,” Epstein says. “Our expertise is in documenting procedures in a way that we can easily train our people on. So Step One is for us to sit with the person doing the task and document what they do. Once we’ve documented those procedures, we send them back to the client and ask for corrections or exceptions. We can train our people in China rapidly to run the task. And their singular focus is that task, so our customers are pleased with the level of accuracy.” Each Chinese team is paired with only one client so they can become expert in that client’s system and procedures. Having the Chinese workers assigned to just one client enhances confidentiality and security, he notes. And the way ReSource Pro accesses the client’s systems is also a security consideration. “The fact that we’re connecting remotely to the client system and working in their system means that none of their data ever leaves their system. There’s nothing of any of our clients on any hard drive in China,” he declares. When Lisa Paul began working with ReSource Pro, she had one Chinese employee. Over time, she added more. Dan Epstein acknowledges that that is yet another benefit to working with his organization. “The client drives the growth. Clients don’t need to hire a bunch of people at the same time. We work incrementally.” Behind the scenes, though, ReSource Pro is training new Chinese hires on each client’s system so as the client wants to add staff, there’s no delay. “Because we’ve documented all the processes, we can train people incredibly quickly,” he notes. “Our approach is immensely scalable.” * For more information: |
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