Case Study: Fusion implementation for a reinsurer and their MGU network
- Marketing
- Aug 1
- 6 min read
Improving a reinsurer’s delegated operations by delivering greater profitability and operational efficiency.
Who are Northernlight Re?
Northernlight Re is a North American-based reinsurance company with interests that span a range of sectors, including marine, aviation and liability. Powered by a network of experts, MGUs and specialty underwriters, they deliver significant value to partners and a high-quality claims experience to customers.
The challenge
As part of their drive to expand underwriting capacity and bring additional value to the DA chain, they identified systems and technology improvements as a key action area.
To enable Northernlight Re management to make the consistent, powerful and insightful business decisions necessary, a new technology ecosystem was needed. It was important that these tools covered the full range of Northernlight Re’s operations, including Delegated Authority business, but that there was interoperability between them so the different parts of Northernlight Re’s team experienced a seamless workflow.
“Bordereaux lifecycles were simply too long. This meant we couldn’t get a truly accurate picture of our profit and exposure. It simply wasn’t efficient enough to keep up with the demands of our business. We needed a solution.” Mark Gregory, VP, Northernlight Re
Project requirements
With Alchemy working as consultants and implementation partners, Amarillo’s bordereaux management data connection tool Fusion was selected to manage Northernlight Re’s delegated business and ensure all participants in the DA operations worked together consistently and effectively.
“We desperately needed a tool that could manage the wide range of data we were receiving from our MGU network and could demonstrate clearly and quickly our exposure. We needed it to be simple, quick to adopt and flexible so that our partners could use it and benefit regardless of the technical capabilities of their set up.” Mark Gregory, Northernlight Re
The key aims of this implementation project were to:
Assist and educate MGU partners in the new data standardisation requirements to deliver smooth, effective delegated reporting.
Optimise efficiency by minimising effort duplication and unnecessary re-work through integrating their bordereaux management with other internal systems.
Integrate with upstream MGU PAS or other systems to facilitate straight-through processing delivering a time saving to all members of the chain.
Work with other members of the ecosystem to develop a combined reporting suite allowing for the stored data to be consumed more efficiently.
“The challenges Northernlight Re were facing are ones that we see frequently across the DA chain: data quality, integrity and standards. This is exactly why we developed Fusion. We knew we could help Mark and the team to and deliver the efficiency and profitability improvements they were seeking” Steve Stacy, Chief Product Officer, Amarillo
The plan
Process and building the architecture
To ensure we deliver and implement systems that exactly meet the clients’ needs, at Amarillo we take an ‘inverted’ approach. This means first identifying all of the clients’ reporting requirements across the whole business and then configuring the system to meet these needs.
By working in this way, it’s much easier to identify where the data requirements of different processes or tools overlap. In turn, this creates a much more efficient central data model that would act as the blueprint, reference and hub for all future decisions.
As Northernlight Re were focussed on data collection and management across multiple tools, the next step was to establish where each of these data points would be collected, whether from the PAS or via Delegated Authority bordereaux.
Templates
Once the data points were established, Amarillo’s team then designed the master data template that all chain participants would follow and comprehensive implementation training was then delivered. This established the baseline standards of data capture and reporting that were essential to ensure smooth adoption and effective, efficient operations.
To ensure a standardised approach, Amarillo worked with Northernlight Re’s team to demonstrate and educate their MGU network on Fusion’s options and capabilities but also to establish the processes that would deliver maximum efficiency to all parties.
A tailored approach
Some of Northernlight Re’s MGUs were not quite at the technological stage to adopt the specified, agreed template due to internal technical restrictions or current incompatibilities.
However, this did not prevent them from working with Fusion and Amarillo’s engineers and data teams to ensure the Fusion Drive tool could understand the data as they were able to send it, and so that it could be effectively ingested by Fusion.
Whilst the Amarillo team did the data mapping in this case, the system has been designed to be self-serve, so any client would be able to conduct this operation themselves, offering them maximum onboarding flexibility and convenience.
For those MGUs in a position to adopt the agreed spreadsheet immediately, onboarding was even easier. It was simply a case of Amarillo teaching Fusion how to read the template and they were then ready to start ingesting the bordereaux data.
Adoption hurdle | Amarillo solution |
Fragmented mandatory data fields | Shared standards and templates developed by Amarillo consultants, means all teams adopted a unified structure |
Inconsistent terminology across regions in multi-lingual MGA networks | A common naming framework established and delivered by the Amarillo team, with training delivered across all regions to support consistent understanding and adoption |
ISO reporting inconsistencies | Close monitoring and intervention by Amarillo’s Technical Customer Support Manager to ensure standardised reporting level |
API connections to internal systems | Amarillo’s development team liaises with relevant stakeholders to solve and develop effective solutions |
Data ingestion
Once the framework was built, it was then time to start inputting the data.
With an API connection, data transfer from the MGA’s PAS systems into Fusion was simple. Insureflow, Northernlight Re’s PAS of choice, has an existing API agreement with Fusion so they were able to work together ‘straight out of the box.’
This means that whenever a future suitable agreement is created in Insureflow, it will automatically be created in Northernlight Re’s Fusion, ready for processing.
Flexibility as standard
Part of Amarillo’s philosophy is that ‘one size does not fit all’ and so Fusion has been designed in a way that consistent flexibility lay at its heart, enabling all parties within a DA arrangement to interact with the tool in the way that suits them best.
With such a diverse range of MGUs across a range of business lines and territories, Northernlight Re were able to leverage this flexibility to their advantage. They were able to tailor each MGU agreement process, but that meant that all of the data coming from across the range of delegated parties was consistent, accurate and timely.
Whilst some MGAs adopted the API approach, others were able to use the Fusion Contributor function which enabled them to access Fusion directly – validating their own data and allowing Northernlight Re to use this data, without the need to involve themselves in the ingestion process, eliminating re-work, inefficiency and minimising the chances of user error.
For those with systems unable to integrate with Fusion directly, MGUs worked alongside Northernlight Re’s internal team to secure streamlined secondary ingestion into the Fusion system.
The results
“At Northernlight, we’re delighted at the results we’ve seen so far and all of our MGUs are totally onboard. We can’t wait to roll this out further as our business continues to grow.” Mark Gregory, Northernlight Re
Months on from implementation, Northernlight Re are seeing significant benefits to their system already.
Working closely alongside Amarillo staff to oversee the smooth operating of the Fusion system, the benefits are now clear:
Accurate data is now only being created once
No duplicated capturing of data necessary – one-time capture only
Northernlight Re can trust that the data received is timely, consistent, high-quality and immediately actionable.
Not only has this reduced their typical bordereaux life-cycle by 97% - slashing inefficiency and enabling freer cash flow, their MGUs are also able to improve their reporting, prove their value, evidence their optimal strategy and increase their own profitability.
By reducing life-cycles from two weeks to two hours, Northernlight Re’s staff can focus more effectively on profit generation activities rather than the extensive re-work and data checking and cleansing.
“Mark, Greg and the team at Northernlight have been fantastic to work with. They are future-facing, open to embracing new processes and tools into their business and it’s brilliant to see how adopting Fusion is helping them grow even further.” Steve Stacy, Amarillo
Find out more
Are you a reinsurer and looking to improve the quality of your DA data like Northernlight in our case study? Or are you an MGU or MGA interested in improving data quality so you can easily evidence the profitability and value you bring to carriers?
Contact the team at Amarillo and discover how Fusion will help you make bordereaux better.