Sompo Seguros

Improving revenue growth and customer satisfaction—with ARIS

Meet the customer:

Brazilian insurance company Sompo Seguros was born out of a 2014 merger of Marítima Seguros, founded in Santos in 1943, and Yasuda Seguros, which had been in Brazil since 1959. It is owned by Sompo Holdings Group, one of the largest insurance groups in Japan, with over 130 years history of providing casualty, life, and personal accident insurance in 30 countries. It has 80,000 employees and 20 million customers.

Challenges

- Lack of visibility across the organization prevented effective process monitoring and control.
- Decentralized processes led to duplication of efforts, inconsistent service delivery and increased operational costs.
- Difficulty in sharing information across departments hindered decision-making.
- Inability to grow and organize mapped processes for onboarding, underwriting, risk assessment.

Outcomes

- Reduced process execution and response time by 10% to 30%.
- Realized significant cost savings from operational efficiency.
- Improved customer satisfaction, retention, acquisition and potential revenue growth due to faster service delivery.
- Streamlined workflows, reduced duplication of efforts, enhanced communication across teams.

Solution

ARIS Business Process Analysis (BPA)

The fact that we have the value chain, organization chart and mapped processes structured and organized in ARIS provides us with a lot of transparency and an easier response to regulatory bodies. We can now also review processes for continuous improvement.”

- Marcio Mori, Process Manager, Sompo Seguros

Ensuring process visibility in a growing insurance business

The Brazilian insurance market is booming, with sectors from cybersecurity to infrastructure and renewable energy on a growth spurt. To expand into some of these new areas, and better compete in its established markets such as transportation, oil, and gas, Sompo Seguros needed better process visibility.

One of the top five insurers in Brazil, Sompo Seguros was created from a merger in 2014, integrating Marítima Seguros and Yasuda Seguros. Its personal insurance division was spun off in 2023, leaving the company to focus on newer areas of risk including infrastructure, renewable energy and cybersecurity.

The merger—and subsequent sale of the division—left the combined company’s processes with little centralization or coordination. Sompo Seguros was struggling to understand and control its processes, which were scattered across divisions and teams, even as the number of processes was growing. This caused a lack of visibility, and the company had little control over its processes enterprise-wide, hindering its decision-making and business performance.

“The lack of visibility was creating challenges in monitoring and controlling processes, in sharing information effectively across departments, and in supporting centralized data management systems. These issues ultimately hindered decision-making, operational efficiency, and overall business performance, highlighting the critical importance of establishing a robust visibility solution,” said Marcio Mori, Process Manager at Sompo Seguros.

Customer onboarding, claims processing, underwriting procedures, insurance policies, and risk assessment protocols were not standardized, with many only documented in PowerPoint, which was slow and prone to manual error.

A lack of visibility and control over processes was impacting the business in several ways. It hampered overall operational efficiency, which could cause a poor customer experience and ultimately damage revenues. And because response times for customer inquiries or issues were slow, this increased the risk of compliance violations. Fixing this was imperative if Sompo Seguros wanted to maintain financial stability and growth while avoiding regulatory breaches.

Reducing processing times for customers

When the company restructured its value chain, it began to organize and map its processes based on it. It needed to gain visibility and control over these processes with a solution that could design, document, analyze – and then optimize them. That solution was ARIS BPA.

By standardizing, centralizing, and sharing process information and organizational charts, Sompo Seguros identified bottlenecks and redundant steps. It saved time by streamlining workflows, reducing duplication of efforts, and enhancing communication among teams. Additionally, it led to fewer errors due to consistent processes and improved visibility into operations.

“We streamlined the steps involved, eliminated unnecessary paperwork, and integrated digital tools for smoother onboarding experiences, resulting in faster execution and response times,” said Marcio.

The reduction in execution/response time varied depending on the specific process improvements implemented, but typically ranged between 10% to 30%.

This led to significant financial benefits, such as cost savings from increased operational efficiency, improved customer retention and acquisition, and potential revenue growth due to faster service delivery.

“While it’s challenging to quantify the exact monetary value linked to shorter response times, the overall impact on profitability and competitive advantage was substantial,” said Marcio.

Financial, customer and regulatory benefits

By using ARIS BPA, Sompo Seguros has benefited in many ways: Its response times are up by 10-30% and is more competitive, it realizes “significant” financial benefits, and is better at avoiding regulatory fines and penalties. Customers are onboarded faster, served better, and experience fewer issues.

Next, Sompo Seguros plans to expand ARIS usage to its Sompo Consumer spinoff company.