Oswestry Mutual Insurance - Essay Example

In 1991, the company decision-making process was highly centralized. The growth experienced by OMI in the mid to late 1980's and the need to become more responsive to the dynamics of the industry, top management decided to change the operating structure. In 1991, they reorganized into 6 sectional-regional profit centers. The branch offices 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 claims filed through both branch offices and the independent agents located in that region.

The head office's 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 information services 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 1980's, it became painfully obvious to OMI that the companies method of processing 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 committee was established. Representatives came from Information Systems, and the major functional area user groups. They studied current information system problems, determined future requirements, and developed specifications for new systems to meet their needs. The project 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 company's 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