By Dan
Gengler, Internal Actuary, Montana State Fund, and
Michele Blumhagen, Quality Assurance Director, ND Workforce Safety & Insurance
 Why
do we maintain the AASCIF Fact Book? Hopefully, the answer is not
because we always have. The AASCIF Audit and Statistics Committee
has maintained the Fact Book in its current form for many years,
annually asking members to provide review and update. The AASCIF
Fact Book provides profiles on the operations and operating environments
of member state funds. The stated purpose of the Fact Book is as
an information-sharing library that helps AASCIF members explore
ideas for their own organizations by helping them understand the
various funds’ similarities and differences and learn about
their environments, activities and approaches to operating in their
markets.
But every so often, it’s useful to ask whether something
we’ve always done is something we should continue to do.
The AASCIF Fact Book was developed in a time when few, if any,
state funds filed statutory financial statements. Now, such financial
information is generally readily available from public sources.
The initial development of the AASCIF Fact Book predated common
usage of the internet. Now, much of the information contained in
the Fact Book can be gleaned from member websites or other sources
in the time it takes to do a “Google”.
Some AASCIF members decline to participate in the Fact Book. Increasingly,
state funds are being licensed to operate in other jurisdictions.
We are increasingly playing in each others’ backyards and
there is a wariness of sharing information with potential competitors
in the insurance marketplace. In addition, it can be a bit of a
challenge to encourage, cajole, or just plain nag members for annual
review and update of Fact Book submissions. In 2007, we were able
to obtain responses from 21 of 37 members – a less than enthusiastic
57% response rate.
Does the Fact Book still provide value? We think it does. Last
year, the Audit and Statistics Committee conducted an informal
survey on the matter. Three common themes emerged. One was that
the Fact Book, while not frequently used, was still valued – valued
simply because it was there. Not unlike many reference books we
all have on our bookshelves. We may not use a hardcopy dictionary
very often anymore but most of us have one there for the just-in-case
times when we do have need of it. A second theme that emerged was
that the Fact Book may be most useful when looking for information
on how a member state fund compares to other state funds, whether
a member state fund is or is not out of the norm. Despite our inside
joke about how, when you’ve seen one state fund, you’ve
seen one state fund, we and our stakeholders often find that such
comparative analyses are still relevant. A third theme that emerged
was that even though much of the information contained in the Fact
Book could be obtained from other public sources, the Fact Book
was a convenient, one-stop-shopping for this information.
So if maintaining an AASCIF Fact Book still holds value for AASCIF
members, can we better structure the information to maximize that
value? We think we can. Can we modify the Fact Book to encourage
a better response rate? After all, given what we’ve informally
learned about the value of the Fact Book to AASCIF members, its
value is dependent upon being as complete and up to date as possible.
Again, we think we can and we have some initial ideas to offer
for your consideration.
First, we might suggest that the Fact Book eliminate most, if
not all, the narrative descriptions and be more number driven.
The narrative descriptions of state fund operations can generally
be obtained from other sources such as member websites or simply
picking up the phone and talking to another member. Most of us
have found AASCIF members to be very generous in sharing information
when direct contact is made. The numbers we collect would be limited
to those statistics that are typically already in the public domain.
The value-added is to assemble those numbers in a single place
for the convenience of AASCIF members.
Second, we might suggest that individual member Fact Book submissions
be consolidated and presented in a form that can be sorted and
queried, for example, in an Excel spreadsheet. We would attempt
to collect statistics that are normalized. That is, the numbers
and values are defined such that they mean approximately the same
thing from one member to another. The workers compensation insurance
industry is already subject to a large degree of uniformity in
financial and statistical reporting through regimes such as NAIC
statutory filing and the NCCI statistical plan.
In addition to restructuring the AASCIF Fact Book to improve its
value to AASCIF members, we think this approach may also help improve
response rates for annual updates. We surmise that the annual request
for update, while not unimportant to our members, tends to be a
task which invariably is given low priority compared to everything
else on our plates at any moment. The current structure results
in a submission which can be 10 pages or more. It’s little
wonder that the annual request for update often goes to the good
intentions pile for an indefinite period of time with a promise
to get to it when we can. A more numbers centered submission would
create a more definitive task and, we hope, a less intrusive claim
upon our members’ scarce time resources. Better value at
less cost is the objective.
This year, the Audit and Statistics Committee would like to more
formally solicit your thoughts. Below is a link to a web based
survey. Give us your feedback on how we can improve the AASCIF
Fact Book to provide better value to our members.
AASCIF Fact Book Survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=XGmlJX5C0L2kUU_2f6LNDscg_3d_3d
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