Data Driven Decisions for Business Coursework 2 Assessment Brief | BPP

Assessment Brief

Assessment of learning outcomes

This assessment is designed to gauge your understanding, skills and application of common data analysis techniques used in business and other organisations today. As such, you need to demonstrate your attainment in these areas according to the four Module Learning Outcomes (LOS):

• LO1: Critically evaluate the evolving use of data in solving business problems, presenting logical arguments based on evidence
• LO2: Explore how data analytics can be used within a business context
• LO3: Critically appraise the presentation of data within a business environment
• LO4: Critically evaluate different business analytical techniques as part of planning a data analytics initiative.

Scenario

You have recently been employed by BeeSafe Insurance as a data analyst.

BeeSafe Insurance is an international UK insurance company offering insurance products for businesses with over 30 subsidiaries in countries around the world. Its main services cover the areas of Motor, Home, Life, Health and Travel insurance.

BeeSafe Insurance has been providing exceptional business insurance services for over 80 years. Its commitment to people-centric insurance has allowed BeeSafe Insurance to give protection to business clients from the small, everyday business risk to the larger, unexpected compensations claims. Its services protect organisations’ work, people, reputation, and ultimately, the future
livelihood of the business. The company’s personalised approach to business insurance and the creative delivery of technology has helped fuel its continued growth.

As BeeSafe Insurance grows, it continues to increase its data analytics roles within the organisation to strengthen its strategic decision-making capabilities. The recruitment strategy is to employ young professionals with strategic and data analytics skills, willing to provide BeeSafe Insurance’s top management with a strong evidence-based foundation for their business decisions. They like recruits
to have a broad management experience combined with a strong academic background. Your MSc degree at BPP University was a key element in their decision to recruit you.

As part of your first assignment at BeeSafe Insurance, you have joined the Underwriting department as a data analyst. Other departments of the company bank include claims, finance and legal.

The underwriting department seeks to develop insurance products that can be sold to its customers at a premium. The department will craft its collection of forms and endorsements to provide the marketing department with the ability to say “yes” to customers and potential customers. Whilst the underwriting and marketing departments want to sign up as many insureds as possible to collect premiums, the claims department manages claims when an insured seeks to recover on its insurance assets. The marketing and underwriting departments are judged by their premium collections (the revenue of the company) and retention volume/ratios (i.e., the percentage of insureds who renew their policies with the company), whilst the claims department is judged by how little it incurs resolving claims. These financial measures drive insurance company management and profits, as well as the bonuses paid to department management1.

Your manager requested you to complete several tasks to ensure that you have a grounded knowledge and understanding of data analytics and its application in decision-making. This is your opportunity to demonstrate your capability and give your employer the confidence to let you run your own project in the future.

The Underwriting team is analysing different growth options so they can provide a more balanced growth in the future, combining traditional face-to-face with online services. In particular, the Underwriting department has teamed up with the IT department to explore how AI-based technologies can provide the basis for process automation, claims optimisation, and developing effective customer engagement strategies. However, it makes sense to define the growth strategy based on these technologies only if the current insurance business model does not provide the expansion and growth opportunities expected by the company’s top management. So, you have been given the responsibility to analyse BeeSafe Insurance's current business performance.

Your job will be to analyse the performance of three of the best international subsidiaries of BeeSafe Insurance: Brazil, Australia and Norway. BeeSafe Insurance has experienced strong competition in these countries from multinational insurance companies such as Aviva and AXA. So,
The performance of these three subsidiaries is a good indication of the current global market performance of the company.

Research objectives and tasks

The Underwriting Director is interested in understanding the options available for an expansion strategy. For this purpose, he wants you to:

Perform an analysis of the revenue (written premiums) and retention volume (number of clients who renew their policies) of the three subsidiaries to identify the best country to start an expansion strategy.

As part of the analysis, the Marketing Manager wants to consider the redevelopment of the company’s global brand strategy to better support the insurance service offering in each country. Her objective is to increase the number of customers covered by the company’s insurance products through a strong brand marketing plan. To do so, she wants to focus the promotion efforts only on the high-performance insurance products of the company, that is, those products with high revenues and high retention volumes. The business insurance products BeeSafe Insurance offers in its three subsidiaries are made of the following insurance product categories:

• Public liability insurance: it protects businesses if something happens at work that results in injury to a customer, a member of the public or damage to someone’s property.
• Employers' liability insurance: it protects businesses if employees get injured or become ill as a result of working for the business.
  Professional indemnity insurance: it protects if any recommendations or advice have caused a financial loss for a client and the company is found to be at fault.
• Contents & stock insurance: it covers the cost of replacing items that are important to the business, such as goods or specific equipment used to run the operations.
• Cyber insurance: it protects from threats in the digital age, such as data breaches or malicious cyberattacks on work computer systems.
  Building insurance: it covers the costs of repairing the damage caused in an event such as a flood or fire at the work premises.

In this respect, she wants you to:

Perform an analysis of the business insurance categories offered in the three subsidiaries to identify those categories with the best performance.

BeeSafe Insurance has used digital technologies in the last 20 years to increase speed, efficiency, and accuracy across every area of its business. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is the latest technology the IT department wants to adopt to significantly accelerate its digitisation strategy. AI can assist the
company in assessing risk, detecting fraud, and reducing human error in the application process, as well as enabling customer service using chatbots. However, there are also challenges and risks in adopting AI. It has been reported that financial institutions using AI have received numerous complaints from frustrated customers trying to receive timely, straightforward answers from their
financial institutions.

The IT department has taken a careful approach to AI by implementing an AI chatbot in its Brazil subsidiary to test the technology. Other insurance companies have adopted AI-enabled chatbots in India, such as Zurich Insurance with its Zara chatbot. The test started in July 2023 and was available through its local website. Initially, the system was used to answer customers’ enquiries about
automated claims processing, lead generation and conversion with prospects, onboarding new clients and FAQS, collecting feedback and customer support.

The IT Manager and the Underwriting Director are keen to understand if the implementation of AI chatbots could be applied to other subsidiaries across the company. So, he wants you to address the question:

Did the implementation in 2023 of the AI chatbot in Brazil have a positive impact on

The responses to the issues detailed above should be included in a summary MS Word report that you save and submit.

Report Sections

Because this is your first project within BeeSafe Insurance, the management team has given you additional details regarding the structure and content that is expected to be seen in your report. This is set out in Section 3 – Report Structure.

The set of data is available (see the module dataset spreadsheet file). Since the data comes directly from the countries, quality issues are present, which will require your attention!

You have four Sections to complete for your summative report.

Section 1 (LO4): Introduction and project plan

Summarise what you are going to present in the report. Then, justify your plan for delivering the research project to the management of BeeSafe Insurance, making sure you also clearly refer to a data analytics implementation framework as part of your plan. Finally, explain how data analytics can add value and help to drive business performance improvements to BeeSafe Insurance.

Section 2 (LO2):

a) Data quality issues and remedies

Proceed with preparing the dataset for the analysis. Discuss initially the general issues encountered in collecting, reviewing and cleansing data and then detail the specific data quality issues you found in the project dataset and how these issues will be addressed.

b) Data analysis and commentary

Using only tables, set out and explain the results of your numeric data analysis and supporting commentary. Start by including a summary of the exploratory data analysis of the dataset. Then create tables where you can analyse the overall performance of BeeSafe Insurance as well as its performance by country and by business insurance category. To answer the Section, you should perform your analysis using at least 3 tables (see guidelines for further details).

Section 3 (LO3): Data charting and commentary

Use your data charting and interpretation skills to develop graphical presentations of the data, together with bullet points setting out the key findings and inferences from the analysis. Create charts where you can compare and analyse retention volume and revenue trends over time by country and by business insurance category, in particular, where you can see evidence of any performance change due to the implementation of the AI chatbot in Brazil during 2023. To answer the Section, you should perform your analysis using at least 3 charts (see guidelines for further details).

Section 4 (LO1): Conclusions and recommendations

Based on your analysis and findings in Sections 3 and 4, set out your conclusions and recommendations to BeeSafe Insurance’s top management. As part of your conclusions, include answers to the three project objectives raised by the top management.