Compliance will force better data management says Roy Hutchinson
The insurance industry is an information industry. Everything it does is about receiving, analysing, producing and reacting to information. That information takes a number of forms from very structured data to unstructured.
The issue of regulatory compliance is now making insurers revisit how they store and manage this information. But compliance is not the only driver. Good information management reduces the cost of doing business and can improve customer service leading to improved profitability.
Exploring the compliance issue first, the FSA requires companies to produce documentary evidence of every single business transaction, including those that have been outsourced.
The problem is how does one capture or produce, store and retrieve that data when needed, especially when the data is not structured, such as letters, photographs and e-mails.
Business benefits come from being able to provide the right data to the right people at the right time. This means that the documents may need to be stored in different ways as different people will require various means of access to them, related to the business process they are involved in, and their location, rather than the original business transaction the document relates to.
When one adds the need for disaster recovery and business continuity into the equation then an electronic repository for all of the organisation's data is a pre-requisite for compliance, risk management and improved business performance.
Once implemented, these solutions can save companies money by eliminating the cost of document transportation and significantly reducing the cost of office and storage space.
Additionally, major benefits in staff productivity can be achieved as access to information is faster, avoiding long unproductive searches for pieces of paper. This has a knock-on effect by facilitating quicker response times to business partners and customers.
Of course having a system to manage the documents is only part of the issue. If data is not periodically archived or deleted the cost of storage and data retrieval will grow large. Therefore, companies must define a retention policy for different types of data.
In summary, companies can reduce operating costs through improving document production and management methods, whilst also assisting in meeting the needs of their business continuity plans.
It will also help them comply with regulation that requires them to be able to produce documentary evidence in support of business transactions.
Roy Hutchinson is Commercial Director at Eurobase
