Oswestry Mutual Insurance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Oswestry Mutual Insurance - Essay ExampleIn 1991, the association decision-making process was highly centralized. The growth experienced by OMI in the mid to late 1980s and the need to become more responsive to the dynamics of the industry, top counsel decided to change the operating organise. In 1991, they re organize into 6 sectioned-regional profit centers. The branch parts remained at 68, each branch office reports to a specific sectional profit centre and sectional office. The sectional office is responsible for approving all policies written and asks filed through both branch offices and the independent agents located in that region.The clearance offices is suppose to establish overall corporate policy and provide support to 6 sectional offices. The head office in Oswestry and the sectional offices were organized on a functional basis. The functional units in all locations are Premium Audit, Underwriting, Sales, Claims/Losses, Finance, Human Resources, Loss Monitoring and Support. However, even though the operational structure was decentralized, most of the breeding profits still remain centralized in the head office, which includes related planning, control, budget authority and decision- making stays at the head office.Computers were used, at first, for financial and statistical report production standard MIS reports included, profit/loss, operations, claim data, loss ratios, and marketing information. In the 1980s, it became painfully obvious to OMI that the companies method of treat policy and claim data needed a major overhaul. John Robson, at the time, director of Information Systems called for a serious review of information service operations. He wanted to know what data was being collected, processed, and how the information was being used by every department and branch office. In 1991, a citizens committee was established. Representatives came from Information Systems, and the major functional area user groups. They studied current inf ormation system problems, determined future requirements, and developed specifications for modernistic systems to meet their needs. The cat was completed in 1993, implemented was an automated policy-writing system which would issue policies, cancellations, changes and renewals, marketing and financial reports were regularly prepared, directly from the data already entered into the policy writing and claim system, an automated claim input system which automatically issue claims cheques, online retrieval of policyholder information became possible at all branch offices, online retrieval of claim information became possible at all branch offices Overall Process To Implement Change The new systems were not perfect, but was a great improvement. When a new application for insurance was received by the Underwriting department in a sectional office, relevant data was entered by a sectional office by a PPD clerk over a telephone line link into the companys large IBM 3090 central mainframe located in Oswestry. Data would then be processed in overnight batch mode to produce a policy which could be printed in multiple copies the next day in Oswestry, and on a remote printer in the sectional office. Also, an online policy-holder file would also be available the next day for retrieval on the sectional office terminal which was also connected to the 3090 in Oswestry. Prior to the systems development, work that took place between 1991-1993 and before, the establishment of the sectional offices, handling personal policy information was a semi-automated clerical