Jeff Robinson, head of risk and compliance solutions at Decision Focus, and Soren Krautwald a partner at the governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software vendor, explain how the provider can help insurers make smart risk decisions
What risk management expertise does Decision Focus offer insurers?
Jeff Robinson: Decision Focus provides a software-as-a-service solution that is hosted on the IBM cloud. It is a no-code platform that is customisable, flexible and is easy to adapt for customers. We also have module templates that our customers can benefit from.
Our solution covers all aspects of risk management and regulatory compliance for insurers, ranging from regulatory reporting to policy management. We cater for insurers, insurance brokers, intermediaries, as well as those within the Lloyd's market, such as managing agents at Lloyd's.
Soren Krautwald: Decision Focus adjusts to our clients' way of working. Often, clients shape the tool around their specific needs.
Point solutions may be able to cover some things quite well, but clients can often end up with a plethora of tools.
Decision Focus offers insurers a single source of truth for all risk, compliance and governance-related matters. This is because all these topics are interlinked.
The Decision Focus platform is used by leading insurance companies, including the BMS Group. Nicole Dancer, group risk director at the BMS Group, says: "Decision Focus provides a single repository for monitoring and oversight of the risk profile of the group. For us, the most important factor is the flexibility of the Decision Focus platform.
"This has enabled us to enhance our framework as our needs evolve, without worrying about the ability of the system to support these enhancements. We have already found additional uses for Decision Focus in the group, such as supplier management and IT security. Decision Focus has significantly enhanced our risk culture."
Commenting on the Decision Focus platform, Eugene Owusu, head of risk and compliance transformation and chief product owner at Liberty Specialty Markets, says: “Rapid, high-quality delivery when on a short timeframe with multiple stakeholders. Full roll-out within one quarter for all areas of our business. Decision Focus is revolutionising how we go about risk management linking risks, controls and incidents in a way that is simple to navigate, visualise, analyse and report.”
What is Decision Focus's approach to customer service?
Jeff Robinson: Decision Focus is more than a technology provider. Our implementation teams include domain knowledge experts with expertise in governance, risk and compliance for insurers, who have held senior roles in the insurance sector.
Our solutions are proportionate, pragmatic, robust and reliable. We know what it takes to get good frameworks established and with our platform this can be done in a timely and cost-effective manner.
We will often help a client with a risk management implementation first, and then be asked to move onto a compliance issue. It grows organically from there, which means we often support clients in numerous areas, such as third-party risk management, and business continuity planning and regulatory reporting.
Soren Krautwald: Nobody has ever failed by starting simple. That is our mantra. We really work hard not to over engineer the implementation of our solutions. We are happy to start small and then it organically grows from there because clients see they are getting real value.
How does Decision Focus deal with data security?
Soren Krautwald: Decision Focus is ISO 27001 certified and data security is our top priority. For this reason, we have introduced multiple processes to ensure the security of clients' data and enable better compliance. We also have robust password policies in place and ensure data encryption. We use IBM as our cloud provider, and it takes security very seriously.
What is your outlook on changing GRC trends and how will Decision Focus adapt?
Jeff Robinson: Our platform will continue to evolve. There are some particular areas of focus in the market, for example a UK Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) framework could reform the way audit, controls and governance are managed at large organisations.
We have expertise in UK SOX. Operational resilience and product governance are other growing focus areas for insurers.
Soren Krautwald: We have gone about our business quietly until recently, but now want the insurance market to know about our expertise. We aim to be the de facto choice for insurers looking to support their risk, compliance or internal audit functions.
Jeff Robinson: We are proud of what we do and know our solution is great value for our clients. That is why we are really delighted to win InsuranceERM's end-to-end solution of the year award.
