Claims
Commercial Property Supplier Network
How do Norwich Union General Insurance (NUGI) manage their suppliers?
The following Reporting Measurements are in place and are collated via a central Management (MI) Information team within the Supplier services team.
- Audit
- MI
- Service Level Agreements (SLA's) and Benchmarking
- Key performance Indicators (KPI's)
- Supplier Benchmarking
- Customer Service Index (CSI)
- Focus Team Issues and Complaints,
- Financial Services Authority (FSA) Compliance
- Corporate Social responsibility (CSR)
This Reporting is fed directly to the Supplier Relationship Manager enabling effective Supplier Management
1) Process audits
Aims:-
Process Audits to deliver continuous improvement and
- To assess supplier performance against contractual requirements, SLA's and regulatory requirements. e.g. FSA, health & Safety
- To identify risks and recommend controls
- To confirm spend controls are appropriate
- To confirm customer service is appropriate
- To identify any process improvements
- To spread best practice
Outputs: -
High level feedback given by the auditor to the supplier on site.
Formal reports to NUGI Supply Chain Managers (SCM) and Head of Identifying key issues, corrective actions and process improvements
NUI SCM to share findings with Supplier and agree corrective actions and manage CAP timetable
Format :-
Process varies according to Supplier needs
Where there are several Suppliers within the same field (e.g. Legal panel, property repair etc.) a generic process is in place
2) MI: -
- The MI team within Supply Chain Support collates the MI throughout Supplier Services.
- MI is received from Suppliers on the 10th day of each month. The information is used to produce a report for the Commodity Teams detailing claims volumes, no of claims dropped repudiations, costs etc.
- The SCM uses this information to ensure their Suppliers are meeting NUGI requisites.
- The Audit Team audit the Suppliers to ensure that they have met NUGI MI requirements and also to ensure that the Suppliers are compliant with the NUGI process.
3) Service Level Agreements
- SLA'S are in place with all Supplier arrangements.
- The SLA is an agreement between the service provider and its customer quantifying the minimum acceptable service to the customer.
- They determine the service dimensions to be provided by the Supplier to NUGI, the service levels that need to be met per service delivery and the method of measurement of each of these service levels
- Various measures are used to ensure Suppliers are performing against set SLA's:
- Focus Team Issues
- Process Audit
- CSI
- MI
4) Key Performance Indicators
- Measurement of KPI's is a key part of the SCM role. KPI measurements enable us to identify trailing and leading implications
- Suppliers are benchmarked on their KPI's these are carried out half yearly by the SCM's.
5) Supplier Benchmarking
As a result of the Benchmarking studies
- Suppliers Ranked bottom have been removed from the NUGI Network after failure to respond to corrective action plans
- Additional volume awarded to those best performers with the correct geographical coverage
- Suppliers in the lower half are fully aware that if they don't improve they will be in the "relegation zone"
- Suppliers proactively work with NUGI to improve their performance especially in the area of:
6) Customer Service Indexes
WHAT IS CSI?
CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) is a common and consistent approach to the measurement of customer satisfaction with Norwich Union General Insurance (NUGI) claims preferred Suppliers/Repairers across all commodities.
HOW IS CSI SCORED?
The CSI measurement is based on customers responding to a number of questions where they rate their claim service experience using a number scoring system as follows:
1 - Very Poor, 2 - Poor, 3 - OK, 4 - Good and 5 - Very Good.
CSI OVERALL PERFORMANCE BY COMMODITY
CSI percentage results by commodity reported in 2005 are based on the total number of responses by customers saying 5 - Very Good, 4 - Good and 3 - OK to the service they received on each question asked. The percentage results of the two "headline" questions on Overall Service and Propensity to Renew, generic to all customer satisfaction surveys, are included in all Supply Chain performance reports on a monthly basis.
CSI INDIVIDUAL SUPPLIER/REPAIRER PERFORMANCE
CSI percentage results of supplier/repairer service performance, based on customers responding 5 - Very Good, 4 - Good and 3 - OK, are shared with Suppliers/Repairers individually. An escalation email alert process ensures that customer issues and poor performance is highlighted to both Supplier/Repairers and NUGI immediately and that appropriate resolution actions are taken and closed out with the help of the NUGI Supplier Focus Team and Commodity network support teams. Exceptionally good service customer feedback is also escalated by email to congratulate the appropriate people within NUGI and the Suppliers/Repairers.
WHO IS USING CSI?
CSI has been rolled out to all Supply Chain commodities during 2005 as follows:
- Household Suppliers (Property, Contents, Loss Adjusters, Drainage and Glazing)
- Personal Motor Gold Select Repairers (GSR's)
- Motor Glass Repairer
- Legal Expense Insurance Main Solicitor
- Commercial Loss Adjusters
SAME MEASUREMENT/DIFFERENT METHODOLOGIES Different methodologies of obtaining customer feedback have been used in 2005:
- Household & Legal Commodities use Supplier branded comment cards to capture feedback on the service experienced by claimants. Customers are invited to complete comment cards (to NUGI specification) distributed by suppliers and to send the card Freepost direct to an external market research agency who compile and report the results to NUGI on a monthly basis.
- Personal Motor, Motor Glass, Commercial (Phase 1) Loss Adjusters use telephone surveys and a web-based reporting tool methodology. Customers are contacted by an external Call Centre and information input directly into the website. The results are calculated and displayed (to NUGI specification) within the website tool and access to the site (real time) is by individual NUGI and Repairer logins and passwords. The external agency (website developer who also manage the Call Centre) provides monthly reports as well.
CSI in 2006
The CSI programme will continue and develop further in 2006.
Commercial CSI (Phase 2) will commence in 2006 to include all Commercial Property Suppliers.
- A common and consistent approach across the commodities
- A measurement methodology which provides:
- Adequate detail to identify supplier trends
- Analysis of customer service issues without burden to the customer
- An Indication of the effect of service on renewal
- Figures which are statistically defensible
- Demonstrate our commitment to customer care without compromising our supplier relationship
Benefits
Provides NUGI and suppliers with a status report from our customers
- A more customer-centric measure than pure MI
- Compare suppliers like-for-like within commodities
- Identify what matters most to customers - not what we think matters to them
- going the extra mile
- affect on rates of renewal
- Shift towards a perception of customer and away from claimant
7) Supplier Focus Team
- The Supplier Focus Team provide assistance with the following:
- Supplier issue escalations
- Trend issue collation
- Performance management by issue analysis
- Communication channel between Supplier and Claims, and vice versa
- 360 Feedback, including reports to Relationship Managers
- Assistance with Supplier problems (non-debt related issues)
- Identifying internal and external process failures and training needs
- Maintaining and developing relationships with the Supplier Co-ordinators
- Organise and chair Claims Focus Groups
- Assist relationship managers with the promotion of the Supplier Network
8) FSA and the Supplier
- FSA Guidelines have been communicated to all Suppliers to ensure that NUGI is FSA compliant and to provide our customers with swift resolution of any issues.
- Supplier SLA's set by NUGI currently cover FSA requirements
- We can performance measure FSA compliance via Monthly Supplier MI
- Those Suppliers who provide goods and services (contents) - non specific MI is required and we can performance measure FSA compliance via KPI's and SLA's
- Property Network - specific MI is required so that we can Regulate Repudiations
- Performance Measurement of FSA compliance is identified via the Audit Process.
9) Corporate Social Responsibility
We have communicated with our Suppliers Aviva Groups CSR Policy.
The current Outsourcing policy states that outsourcing arrangements should reflect Aviva values described within the Aviva CSR policy. Out of the eight Policies it is the Human Rights and Standards of Business Conduct policies that have reference to business partners within its scope and Environment policy says we will strive to integrate environmental considerations into purchasing and supplier management.
- Questionnaires have been rolled out to all Suppliers post selections to ascertain Supplier CSR stance we can then utilise this to ensure consistency and adherence to NUGI's CSR requirements
- CSR Supplier responsibilities have previously formed part of the Supplier Selection Process and going forward the CSR question set are to be a criteria in the Supplier Selection process
Supply Chain Manager
All Household and Commercial Suppliers managed by a Supply Chain Manager (whose key roles are outlined below:
10 Key activities
- Monitoring/improving the service
- Delivery of the identified cost savings
- Quarterly Review of Performance with supplier senior mgt
- Supplier training/technical referral point (Knowledge sharing)
- Managing the situation when things go wrong
- Liaison with claims units/brokers
- Introduction/Run off of suppliers
- Contingency plans
- Integration of the Network component suppliers
