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View from the Top - Part 2 |
Part 1
Read Part 1
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COMPANY BACKGROUND
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Founded in 1901, Hiscox is a UK-based
specialist insurer with individual and business customers
in the UK and Europe. It is listed on the London Stock
Exchange and has 426 employees. In 2003, its gross premium
income was £797.4 million and its pre-tax profit was
£83.4 million.
Hiscox underwrites large or complex
insurance risks through the Lloyd’s insurance market,
and underwrites insurance for professionals and high
net-worth households through its UK Retail operation.
Hiscox Syndicate 33 has been a leading underwriter at
Lloyd’s for a number of years and is now a top three
syndicate.
Hiscox currently has two business
process outsourcing contracts, with Capita Insurance
Services and Capita London Market Services, covering
its underwriting back-office processes and syndicate
data entry. The contracts involve about 55-60 full-time
equivalent staff at Capita. Hiscox has also placed a
number of smaller outsourcing contracts.
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Q: HAVE YOU QUANTIFIED THE BENEFITS FROM
OUTSOURCING?
A: You can’t necessarily quantify it in monetary terms but
the main benefit has been flexibility to respond to market
changes or increased volumes. We can introduce a new scheme
quickly without worrying about how to resource it, and that’s
enabled us to move quite quickly on a number of occasions.
It has allowed us to focus on our core competency – underwriting,
not administration. This is the key benefit for us and has
been the main driver for us outsourcing additional functions
over the last five or six years.
An important benefit is improved quality and service levels.
We can’t necessarily quantify those improvements because we
didn’t always measure them ourselves before we started outsourcing!
But since we’ve been measuring them, we have seen sustained
improvements.
We can also control operating costs. The SLA allows for a
10% variance on cost, but for anything above that we know
exactly what it is going to cost us.
More...
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Conspectus 2004
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Copyright © 2004
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