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Manzana Insurance

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1. How is the Fruitvale branch doing? On viewing the financial performance of Manzana Ltd., we see that the branch profitability is decreasing. There is a huge backlog of policies, which is resulting in delays for current orders too. The number of new policies and endorsements appeared to be stagnating, whereas the rest of the industry reported moderate growth rates. According to the figures of the present quarter, Fruitvale had shown a decline in insuring new policies whereas Golden Gate had issued 100 more policies than them in the same quarter. Moreover, the turnaround time, the time from policy request to policy issue, for Fruitvale was 5 days, which was, much more than the turnaround time of Golden Gate (2 days). The branch was also losing on renewals, which amounted to nearly 33%, again more than double of Golden Gate. The renewal losses represent a significant loss of business and an overall reduction in the number of policies in force. While new policies have not increased substantially, renewal policies are being lost, thus, effective growth isn't happening. 2. What are the causes of these problems? One of the causes is the wrong method used in calculating the turnaround time. Their calculations show a much higher time than is actually the case, hence, agents don't want to work for them and readily switch to the competition. Another cause is the employees' lack of willingness to work more at RERUNs and RAINs. When the conversion rate of RAP to RUN is only 15%, it seems that a lot of time is being wasted. The revenue figures for RAPs hasn't been given explicitly, but still, a proper cost-benefit analysis needs to be done to establish priorities. The employees aren't working enough on renewals, hence, they are losing their existing customers.

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