Catlin Group Limited Facilitating Regulatory Compliance With SharePoint

Challenge

As members of a highly regulated industry, it is mission-critical for Catlin Group Limited and its field offices to stay abreast of regulatory updates and ensure compliance with regulatory and governmental requirements. Before working with Abel Solutions, Catlin’s workflow processes for both document dissemination and product forms creation and review (including approval by governing entities) were largely paper-based, with communications handled via phone, email or regular mail. Catlin’s management wanted to streamline information distribution and operating processes across the enterprise, and viewed its regulatory compliance group as the perfect testing ground for the improvements promised by SharePoint.

Solution

After performing an assessment of the company’s business processes, Abel Solutions recommended that the cornerstone of the SharePoint solution would be a centralized forms library accessible by both Catlin employees and its client underwriters in the field. The document tracking, storage and dissemination solution would facilitate Catlin’s desire to streamline compliance with regulatory and governmental requirements and lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive SharePoint solution down the road.

To facilitate the transition, Abel encouraged Catlin to document a consistent procedure by which field underwriters could request new forms from the regulatory group and route them through the claims and legal departments for finalization and approval. The forms library then became the repository for all newly created forms. Abel also helped Catlin collect and integrate existing forms into the library for ready retrieval by underwriters. This gives field offices a collective, “one-stop shop” for previously approved forms, either for use in their current forms or as the foundation for new forms creation. Eventually, the existing data store will enable a process whereby forms are certified for use in all 50 U.S. states before being published to the library.

For recording and tracking the detailed and complex process of new product filings, a requirement in all states, Abel established a database where employees can record and monitor filings as they complete various stages of review, such as meeting state requisites for pricing and consumer protection. With this initial phase, Abel also set up two beneficial external information portals. The first is a searchable news and information repository, which publishes industry updates from lobbying groups, news services and other sources. The second is a regulatory updates database where offices can view and retrieve both current and historic information.

Results

Based on the results of what Abel representatives called an “earn our stripes kind of project,” Catlin increased its 2009 budget to expand SharePoint site integration into other company operations. According to Catlin team member Bob Eells, Abel was “very, very helpful” in leading the firm through “uncharted territory.” He reports that Abel completed the complex infrastructure tasks and then empowered the Catlin team, through training and support, to build data directories, SharePoint sites and tracking systems on their own. “I was incredibly impressed,” Eells says.