International insurance servicing: A game-changer in managing global programs

By Leslie Carlson, Head of International Insurance Services, Zurich North America.

As more companies expand globally, international risk programs are more important than ever to protect their interests. This global expansion has elevated the role of servicing these complex insurance programs.

Ten years ago, servicing multinational insurance programs was viewed as a back-office activity. Times have changed. Servicing is now front and center, a key consideration in choosing a carrier. That’s because leading companies recognize that servicing can be a competitive advantage in not only managing their total cost of risk, but also in anticipating challenges and opportunities on the horizon.

Servicing can — and should — be viewed as a strategic function that provides risk managers and their broking team with transparency, actionable insights, confidence and agility. Here’s how Zurich does it.

Anticipating needs and leading with a holistic view of your global insurance program

Transparency gives insureds control, which is why it must be at the core of a carrier’s service commitment. This is no small feat given the size and scope of multinational organizations. A Zurich global program, for instance, may have local policies across more than 200 countries and territories, and with constantly changing program details (e.g., new vehicles, removed locations, etc.).

Digital technology lets global insurers provide some program transparency. For example, our My Zurich portal provides insurance program status, certificates of insurance, claims history, risk assessment data, natural catastrophe (CAT) information and risk scenarios. It also features claims status, risk improvement actions, insurance premium tax and regulatory details, and captive and reinsurance documents from around the globe.

Knowing how important certificates of insurance are, we have invested in our My Zurich portal to allow clients and brokers to either automatically create or request certificates.  We continue to expand this capability across countries and lines to give the customer the best digital experience in the market.

As important as on-demand digital resources are, they cannot replace the importance of having experienced representatives available to assist customers. Zurich assigns dedicated International Servicing experts who create transition plans when moving global programs from another carrier and proactively reach out to insureds and brokers at every stage of the placement process, anticipating challenges and informing them of upcoming steps and time-sensitive issues.

We also guide insureds through this complex process including foreign regulatory requirements, including premium allocations, special tax requirements, anti-money laundering forms, and policy acceptance requirements. These insights are packaged with a heat map showing the status of each local policy (e.g., issued, invoiced, paid) — informing brokers and customers when a local payment by a foreign subsidiary is long overdue, so the insured can expedite payment and ensure coverage isn’t disrupted.

Optimizing money movement and tracking premium payments

Risk managers need insurers to understand how to manage payment tracking of premium and taxes across the globe and quickly pay reinsurers and captives to avoid cancellation or gaps in cover. We have found several ways to improve the flow of the money for customers.

Alongside status reports showing overdue premium payments and root causes, Zurich offers a cutting-edge stateside collection option that pre-funds foreign policy payments prior to our receiving payment from a customer. Leveraging our broad network, we can eliminate processing and payment delays in this highly regulated environment and avoid cancellations or non-renewal of coverage. When using this option for cash-before-cover countries, we help customers eliminate gaps in cover where possible.

In Italy, for example, we funded, through stateside collection, a premium of 180,000 euros in two business days for a new customer that operates a large 187-vehicle fleet there. This allowed the customer to meet the local cash-before-cover requirement. They paid Zurich later for the premium owed.

Comprehensive, timely country data is critical to this capability. Around the globe, Zurich teams leverage our industry-leading compliance tool, Global Program Support (GPS), which has a database of evolving country-by-country insurance requirements. GPS helps customers ensure alignment with all laws and their out-of-territory insurer tax obligations.

We’re also exploring ways to strengthen transparency of premium tracking with a comprehensive view of complex, global programs. This is a real challenge for companies that use multiple insurance brokers and carriers. We are looking at innovative solutions such as Application Programming Interface (API) Connections, which enables information sharing. Initially, API Connections could help address payment and collection challenges by providing sources of truth for payment status to all parties.

Global insights to optimize your risk strategy

Having a holistic view of program performance along with deep servicing experience can provide insights to help insureds manage their total cost of risk. This also helps insureds and their broking teams anticipate what to expect and how to improve.

Key performance indicators (KPIs), current and historical, can help insureds understand and address servicing challenges. Shared by Zurich during stewardship meetings, KPIs break out each country’s performance and include time taken to issue invoices and policies and receive local payments. These KPIs, along with benchmarking against Zurich’s broader portfolio, help insureds focus improvement efforts where they’re most needed, such as expediting premium payment and issuance, which in turn can accelerate payments back to their captive. Our KPI analysis extends to global servicing, with dashboards and reports that have helped us significantly improve service quality and timeliness.

Other insights come from deep experience.  Based on this experience, servicing team members identified a newer compliance concern: data privacy, following the passage of the General Data Protection Regulation and other similar data regulations. The issue arose for us when a U.S.-based customer wanted to analyze loss trend details containing personal data (i.e., claimant names) from a foreign subsidiary in Europe. Our servicing lead was able to inform the manager about GDPR and its implications and worked with them to develop a compliant approach for managing this data. This solution will benefit countless other multinational customers.

Confidence, collaboration and agility for whatever comes next

For risk managers who are constantly evaluating risk options, it’s important to have a carrier that listens and shares the “why.” For example, if a customer decides to not use a local broker in country and use our stateside collection, Zurich communicates the importance of the customer providing a local country contact to review draft policy or sign local anti-money laundering forms rather than a broker contact. Zurich offers this coaching on a broader scale with a variety of accredited continuing education programs on global coverage and servicing.

A strategic servicing partner also needs to adapt to help customers address operational challenges. For example, determining premium allocations and gaining internal alignment can be problematic for customers. We leverage our vast global network to determine minimum in-country premiums, look at prior year when applicable, and give risk managers approximate starting figures. As a result, they can more easily allocate their funds and anticipate their budgets.

Having a robust servicing team at the global level is critical to this agility. At the heart of Zurich’s vast global network are our 50 owned offices and five Network Service Centers, regional teams staffed by multilingual insurance experts who can help if something goes wrong or is needed quickly. For example, when an insured decided to host events in several African countries, Zurich was able to add coverage in one day. Another customer received certificates of insurance for retail properties across 17 countries in just 72 hours.

In the U.S., our dedicated International Servicing team under one umbrella has a holistic, multi-line view of customer programs, as well as specialists dedicated to specific lines of business. Team members understand the ramifications of each of these coverages and the exposures they represent in all the different countries where insureds do business — now and in the future. That means they can help connect the dots and engage the best of Zurich to help identify and address risk opportunities.

A proven commitment to strategic servicing and innovation

As I mentioned, servicing can — and should — be a strategic function that provides the insured with transparency, actionable insights and agility. As a leading global insurer, Zurich understands what it takes to help businesses of all sizes create compliant risk management programs with the coverage and services they may need in case of a loss. A Zurich International Program offers:

• A dedicated, 75-person servicing team, regionally located and specialized by line of business, providing proactive, flexible servicing solutions with real-time data and insights for your Zurich risk portfolio
• An enhanced international servicing option with a single point of contact for all lines of business, expanded reporting, and priority “white glove” servicing across the global network
• A globally consistent Claims experience from 7,500 Claims professionals in 32 countries, helping you get back to business with prompt money movement and a single Claims contact across all lines of business
• Digital resources such as our Global Program Support tool for designing compliant international program structures, backed by 144 attorneys making sure our customers understand how to meet legal and tax requirements

Whether we’re helping customers today or looking out for them tomorrow, Zurich’s International Servicing team is actively engaged as a strategic partner to help customers build a brighter future with confidence.

Leslie Carlson is the Head of International Insurance Services at Zurich North America, where she leads International program servicing for all lines of business produced and received in the U.S. Leslie manages regional teams of dedicated experts who coordinate across Zurich’s expansive global network and alongside the underwriters to provide a proactive and compliant program and servicing experience.