Client Focus: Mosaic | Risk Management

Some industries bring with them an inherently broad and complex set of risks and exposures. The Mosaic Company is the world leader in one such industry: the production, distribution and marketing of concentrated phosphate and potash, two primary nutrients required to grow the food the world needs. By virtue of its extensive underground mining and chemical manufacturing operations, as well as global bulk distribution, Mosaic’s broad array of risks include exposures in property, workers’ compensation, environmental management, general liability, marine liability and cargo.

With 7,700 people employed in eight countries at 90 locations, Mosaic’s Risk Management team understands the importance of accurately and comprehensively identifying the company’s risks and effectively addressing them through loss control, risk transfer and other risk-mitigation strategies. Yet, according to Mosaic’s Michael R. Bishop, insurance manager, manual exposure-data-collection processes were restricting our ability to gather the level of detail desired in an efficient manner.

In short, the Mosaic Risk Management team had to manually gather renewals data for 49 locations in eight countries, involving more than 50 field contacts, and taking more than eight weeks to complete. In addition to the length of time required and the tedious nature of manual, email-based data collection, the Risk Management department was unable to collect information from individual locations within each non-North American country; the exposure data from multiple locations in each country was submitted as a single submission, thus limiting the depth of information available to underwriters.

Prioritizing exposure data management

According to Bishop, “The risk management team, with the support of executive management, identified a clear need to improve the management of our exposure data across all lines and geographies—to enhance our ability to access exposure data at a highly detailed level. We recognized that enhanced management and analysis of our exposure data would help us achieve the related goals of elevating our strategies in the areas of loss prevention, contractual risk transfer and other risk-mitigation initiatives in addition to improved marketing of our risk.”

To achieve its exposure data management goals, Mosaic augmented the Ventiv's RMIS with a module that automates the process of gathering, compiling and analyzing exposure data across multiple lines. The project began in spring 2010, and the first phase was completed in May 2011.

Mosaic began the global exposure data management project with its casualty, marine and executive risk lines. In phase two, Mosaic integrated exposure data related to property values and business interruption. In addition, Mosaic uses the system to track limitations or exclusions in its policies in order to ensure that, if the company has risks that are excluded from policies, those exposures are recognized and addressed through other mitigation strategies. As the project enters its second year of a three year rolling plan, Mosaic continues to add additional exposures to the system.

The tool automates the process of contacting locations around the world, prompting contacts to enter exposure data directly into the system and reminding them of deadlines and other expectations. All exposure data is stored in a common database.

In terms of reporting on exposure-data gathering and analysis, the system provides dashboards that keep the risk management team up to date in near real-time on where each location stands in the renewal-data-gathering process. Mosaic generates query reports on multiple topics, including head count, automobile and fleet data, hazardous chemicals, plant profiles, marine liability and cargo risks.

A guiding risk data strategy

The global exposure data management project is part of a larger, long-term Mosaic focus on developing a comprehensive risk data strategy. Since deploying its enhanced RMIS in 2005, Mosaic has moved deliberately and strategically to go beyond the more traditional use of a RMIS, which often centers on claim reporting, historical claim analysis, storage of historical policy information and business interruption values.

The exposure data management project moves Mosaic towards macro goals such as integrating exposure data with loss-experience data; the project has also enabled Mosaic to integrate risk data with business and financial information tools aside from its RMIS. Additionally, the project was undertaken with the goal of establishing a long-term record of historical exposure data that is comprehensive, expansive, accurate, and eminently usable in demonstrating the characteristics of Mosaic’s entire spectrum of exposures—all of which enables underwriters to position Mosaic for the most favorable coverage at the lowest premiums.

“It was difficult to access exposure data at a highly-detailed level, due to the existing manual, spreadsheet-based exposure data management process,” said Bishop. “We found it challenging and time consuming to identify and track risks at all locations and in every phase of production and distribution, which are essential, fundamental risk management tasks.”

On the risk insurance side, the manual data management process made renewals inefficient and fraught with the potential for human error, which made it challenging for the risk management team to answer the executive management mandate of driving risk and insurance performance from a financial perspective—namely, reducing total cost of risk.

Value, results, ROI

According to Bishop, “Mosaic’s global exposure data management project, supported by Ventiv's risk management information system and specifically the exposures module, has enabled us to sharpen our focus on the core of risk management: the timely identification of all risks and exposures; proper understanding and assessment of them; and the effective response to them by employees at all levels. Moreover, from the insurance risk perspective, we’ve improved efficiency in data gathering and improved the quality and comprehensiveness of data submitted to underwriters, resulting in lowered premiums and improved coverage for Mosaic.”

As for goals and results, Mosaic has achieved its key objectives of:

Reducing the amount of time spent on gathering, analyzing and reporting information about Mosaic's risks (especially for operating company personnel who are busy trying to run their businesses) .
Storing property and casualty exposure and risk data in one location.
Expanding the ability to capture detailed data at a site-specific level and learn more about business and risks.
Achieving better accuracy and data integrity.
Simplifying the process for the broker and risk management staff to develop and write the underwriting submission.
Increasing underwriter confidence in the accuracy of the data being provided and their understanding of operations being insured.

“In the broadest sense,” Bishop said, “this project was conceived and executed in keeping with Mosaic’s corporate vision, mission and values. The project embodies the corporate value of excellence and a focus on innovation and operational excellence; by deploying an automated exposures data management system, Mosaic demonstrates its commitment to excellence and innovation in risk management.”

Products

Your Role

Your Business

Our Solutions

Products

Your Role

Your Business

Our Solutions

AN ELEMENT OF GROWTH

Prioritizing exposure data management

A guiding risk data strategy

Value, results, ROI

With Ventiv Patient Safety, we have all of our claims and incident data in one system, and we can better understand event trends and drivers with advanced analytics and reporting.

One of the key benefits we get from Ventiv is enhanced efficiency. It allows our adjusters to navigate easily through the different components of the claim and put more focus on getting an optimal outcome for the injured worker.

We have more than ten-year relationship with Ventiv. There’s a really strong level of trust in our relationship, which gives us confidence that the team at Ventiv is advising us based on their experience with us and knowing what we need and why.

Working with an experienced provider like Ventiv Technology is an important precondition of achieving our goals and furthering the mission of the County of Los Angeles.

Having the Ventiv team’s guidance was such a great benefit for HPIC. There were many times we turned to Ventiv to ask what other Ventiv clients in our line of work were doing; access to best practices is something we really appreciated.

Products

Solutions

Resources

Company