Success Story - ARIS GmbH & Co. KG

Flawless Loss Ratio Analysis

ARIS insurance uses Qlik to keep track of the asset portfolio and claims

„If you work with numbers and want to view them accurately, Qlik is the absolute best solution. Knowing how business is going helps us to make better decisions and is genuine added value for our customers, which creates even greater trust in our work.“

Bettina Hampe, CFO, ARIS GmbH & Co. KG

The customer

As an internationally active and independent underwriter, ARIS GmbH & Co KG, based in Inning, specialises in the insurance of high-value goods. ARIS underwrites transport and warehouse insurance (jewellers' block) for companies in the gold, jewellery and diamond industries as well as fine art insurance for private and corporate collections, museums, temporary exhibitions and transports on behalf of their insurers. The spectrum of services ranges from underwriting to administration and claims handling to reporting.

Solution at a glance

Industry: Insurance
Departments: Controlling, Management, Underwriting, Claims Department
Region: Inning, Germany
Datasources: openVIVA
Technology used: QlikView, Qlik NPrinting, Qlik Sense
ROI & Time-to-value: Fast retrieval of daily updated data, transparency towards insurers

Initial situation

Jeweller´s Block Speciality Shop

Single carats, luxury watches, Old Master paintings - anyone trading in or owning especially valuable goods also needs special insurance. ARIS GmbH & Co KG knows all the ins and outs the insurance requirements for transporting, exhibiting and storing these kinds of valuables. The internationally active underwriter writes transport and storage insurance (jewellers' block) on behalf of its insurers for companies in the gold, jewellery and diamond industry as well as fine art insurance for private and corporate collections, museums, temporary exhibitions and transport. The entire value chain of insurance policies is covered – from underwriting to administration and claims handling to reporting.

ARIS manages insurance premiums worth around 30 million euros for its customers annually. The service provider based in Inning am Ammersee owes its success not only to its profound expertise in insuring high-value goods, but also to the high degree of trust that insurers place in ARIS.

The challenge of flexible data analysis

Bettina Hampe, responsible for Finance & Controlling at ARIS, wanted to further strengthen this trust through greater transparency. "We realised that many insurers have no way of evaluating their detailed figures on jewellers' block insurance. Sometimes because data was only available late, or because there was a lack of technical solutions. I wanted to ensure that our clients can always know exactly how their business with ARIS is going. And of course, we also need to be able to generate knowledge from data as easily as possible in order to make business decisions."

The goal was to be able to flexibly view data managed in the openVIVA policy management system, such as contracts, premiums, claims, brokerage fees, etc., from different perspectives with the help of a professional software solution and to generate reports for different internal and external recipients.

Solution

Qlik convinces at first glance

Originally, the controller planned to develop her own tool to ensure that all the analytical requirements were covered precisely. At the same time, product information about Qlik landed on Bettina Hampe's desk. She had the solution presented to her and knew immediately: This is it! That's exactly how I imagined a solution should be. "I was convinced by how fast, dynamic and easy to handle Qlik is and how uncomplicated it is to connect our Oracle-based inventory management system," says the controller.

Evaluations updated daily

Bettina Hampe defined her specific requirements, which were then implemented in various Qlik applications.

The jewellers' block and transport business areas are mapped in Qlik. For both areas, applications are available to analyse the asset portfolio, portfolio development and an application to evaluate claims. The data is displayed according to the underwriting year and accounting year. Using various filters such as line of business, insurer, broker, type of contract, date of loss or type of loss, the data can be analysed from different perspectives.

Data from the last 14 years is read in Qlik and updated overnight every day.

In addition to controlling, Qlik is used in the claims department, underwriting, and management.

The central key figure generated by Qlik for ARIS and its insurers is the loss ratio, which displays the ratio of an insurance company's claims expenses against the premiums written/earned in an insurance year. The lower the loss ratio, the more profitably the company is operating. How high is our turnover? With which customers did we make the turnover? How high are the limits? Do we have accumulation risks? How high is the brokerage fee across all policies or at the level of a single client? What costs have been incurred in the past year for security training, surveys and loss adjusting? Is the business still lucrative? How high are the claims payments and subrogation proceeds that have been incurred? These are further core questions to which ARIS gets quick and precise answers with Qlik.

Areas of application and benefits

Transparency convinces internally and externally

"I can now see how our business is doing within fractions of a second," adds Bettina Hampe. "And at the touch of a button, I can transfer selected, audit-proof data to Excel in order to process them individually for reporting to the insurers."

Bettina Hampe reports that the newly gained data transparency also impressed the insurers."Our managing director presented figures on the insurance business with us at a large German insurer – with a discrepancy compared to the insurer's own figures. We absolutely knew that the figures we had evaluated with Qlik were correct, so we invited the chief controller to visit us and I comprehensibly showed him how precisely we can analyse data according to any questions and generate key figures. He was literally speechless. From then on, our numbers were valued even more highly – and the controller now also uses Qlik as a data analysis tool."

Qlik also pays off in the regular audits that ARIS undergoes„"We are always able to provide information. Whatever the auditor wants to know, we have the answer with just a few clicks," Bettina Hampe confirms.

Informatec scores highly with industry know-how and a collegial approach

As a Qlik expert and certified Qlik Elite Solution Provider, Informatec stands by ARIS. „"I knew they were right for us the first time I spoke to Informatec," recalls the controller. "The combination of Qlik expertise with an understanding of insurance and accounting matters was a good fit, as was the personal approach. When we need support, help is there immediately, and we feel very well looked after and advised."

To make reporting even more efficient, for example, Informatec recommended introducing the Qlik reporting solution NPrinting.The Qlik extension is now used to automatically generate a monthly inventory list which we provide to the insurers, who use it as a basis for their internal planning.

Qlik Sense

Freedom for the Intuitions

Qlik Sense is a revolutionary application that enables anyone to create self-service data visualisation, personalised reports and dynamic dashboards.

TO QLIK SENSE

Migrating the BI landscape to Qlik Sense

Informatec is also supporting the insurance company in migrating Qlik Sense: from setting up the Qlik Sense server and taking over the applications to testing all the applications, loading processes and adjustments to the QVDs and the final transition to productive operation, the Qlik partner ensures that the modernisation project runs smoothly. With various training units, Informatec also ensures that Bettina Hampe will not only be able to use Qlik Sense applications in the future, but also develop them autonomously.