Innovation Awards – Collaboration Between IT and Environmental Insurance

Earlier this year, the Innovation Working Group (IWG) announced the winners of Aspen’s first ever Innovation Awards. These awards focus on fostering innovation and celebrate employees and teams who have “Owned It” and implemented inventive solutions. Four winners were awarded in May 2022, all of them either demonstrated creative thinking to either an Aspen business or internal process, or they made a positive and meaningful impact on one or more key, external stakeholders.

One Award Winner was the result of a collaborative effort between the IT and U.S. Environmental teams, led by Aspen’s Rahul Kumar Singh, Aidil Arens and Peter Bakker. Their innovation was the creation of a bulk policy documentation generation system for Environmental Impairment Liability (EIL) insurance coverage. Their goal was to create a tool that was fast, simple, less user interaction and ready to use on Day One.

The Solution

U.S. Environmental Underwriters regularly receive documentation with large amounts of data from broking partners. Previously the Underwriters would have to identify and evaluate key fields manually to generate an insurance policy. The bulk policy documentation system that the two teams created automatically assesses the data in a file and, with one click, a policy is generated automatically in less than three minutes. It’s that simple!

To create a meaningful innovation, the team advises it to be both simple and useful. This solution was built completely in-house using Aspen’s IT resources who partnered with the Environmental team to automate processes, save time and further enhance client service.

Saves Time and Money

Previously, a similar system would take up to 30 minutes to generate one policy document. Now, an Underwriter can now generate one policy document within two-three minutes, so 40 documents can be generated in 90-100 minutes without any user intervention, thus freeing up the Underwriter’s time to focus on what matters most – servicing the customer.

Results

Response time to Brokers has significantly increased and Underwriters no longer need to spend time manually working with documents, reducing the potential for errors. Peter Bakker said: “It’s an elegant solution that is saving our team a huge amount of administration and time.”

Added Benefits

Rahul Kumar Singh said: “The Innovation Awards are a good motivation because you have the opportunity to collaborate with others, think outside the box and solve a particular challenge. It encourages you to think smartly and efficiently, and your work can play a role in helping Aspen achieves its business goals. However, it also means a lot to us that, as part of the winning, the IWG donated money to a charity of our choice. We selected the Ukraine Relief Fund and are grateful that our innovation is also helping those outside of Aspen.”