A platform for all business areas

After reviewing various solutions, Dalarnas Insurance Company decided to implement Mercur Business Control. The system met their requirements for maintaining a common, yet flexible solution for both the planning and monitoring process.

Dalarnas Insurance Company is one of 24 customer-owned regional insurance companies in the Länsförsäkringar Alliance, uses Mercur Business Control for budgeting, forecasting, reporting and analysis with integration to Hogia ERP and Hogia Salary and the electronic invoice system Eyesys. The solution includes different models for revenue budgeting divided into business areas like Property Insurance, Banking and Life Insurance. It also supports the insurance claims budget and detailed payroll budgeting.

Background and project goals 

Dalarnas Insurance Company previously worked with manual processes with Excel as support but concluded that a more robust person-independent tool was needed to support a business that is growing in complexity and scope. In addition, there was a desire to carry out the responsibility for budgeting and forecasting as well as monitoring the results on responsible managers within the organization, which was earlier handled at a more central level.  

The project aimed to create a common platform for all information to be distributed both internally and externally with quality assured standard reports, which can manage authority-controlled business plans, budgets, forecasts, results analyzes and reports.

We really appreciate the flexibility of Mercur Business Control and the ability to customize the system for our different business areas.

Camilla Evertsson, Chief Financial Officer, Dalarnas Insurance Company

Revenue budgeting per business area and letter item 

At the beginning of the project, the focus was to develop models for the budget process. Responsibility for revenue budgeting lies on the market side and is divided into the business areas Sak, Bank, and Liv.

It is important that the input in Mercur Business Control can be customized in different forms that reflect the business model for three different business areas. Within the non-life insurance part, Dalarnas Insurance Company is based on the current portfolio per type of insurance, so-called letter object, namely. traffic, hull, villa, home, business, agriculture, and so on, and indicate the number and amount. Furthermore, the stock change is calculated by entering index increases, premium adjustments, stock increases, and cancellations.

After the automatic calculation of various discounts, budgeted premium income is generated. Similarly, within Bank, the budget specifies volume and marginal per financial service that generates the bank's budgeted net interest income, and within the business area, Life Budget sells the new generates the compensation received from Länsförsäkringar Liv for the brokered transaction. 

Also, the system is designed to budget the various reinsurance pools for both received and departed businesses.

Loss budget 

Dalarnas Insurance Company additionally has a separate model for planning the injury outcome. Here you can also see the number of damages and amounts divided by letter items is stated. When the revenue and claims budget is completed, planning of personnel costs and other operating costs remains.

Detailed staff budgeting on an individual level 

Dalarnas Insurance Company has full support for detailed staff budgeting for individual employees in Mercur Business Control. Through the connection to Hogia Salary, the system is automatically updated with employment number, name, current salary and employment rate. In Mercur, you can then make adjustments for new recruits and resignations as well as changes in salary or employment rate.

Payroll costs are calculated automatically and there are central parameters to support the planning of other personnel-related costs such as car costs, training, travel and the allowance. Of course, access to information on salaries and other personnel costs in the system is authority-controlled.

Operating budget with ”drill down” 

Other operating costs are planned in a clear form with comparative data from the previous year, the outcome of the current year and the latest forecast. With “drill down” you can analyze comparison data in more detail and see how, for example, an account was distributed to other code parts.

It's also possible to see underlying transactions and through the connection to the Eyesys invoice scanning system, you have access to scanned invoices when marking a transaction, which also provides excellent support for users when making future cost estimates.

Reporting and analysis in the same system as the budget 

At Dalarnas Insurance Company, Mercur is integrated with the financial system Hogia and several operating systems within the respective business area Sak, Bank and Liv. With the help of the hierarchies created in Mercur, you can easily follow up activities on different levels.

With the starting point from, as an example, the resulting unit, it is possible to analyze at the overall level or divided into "private" and "companies" etc. With the "drill down" functionality, you can then flexibly analyze further on different grouped or individual code parts such as cost bearer, letter item, result unit, account, or employee.

In addition, just like in the input forms, you can in-depth analyze the transactions behind a value and get a picture of the scanned invoice on the screen. However, it has also been possible to accommodate the organization's wishes by creating key performance reports for target management and analysis as well as a market report where you can follow up sales month by month with clear trend indicators.

Within the Life Insurance section, it is also possible to analyze an individual seller and do a follow-up on a personal level.

Mercur's consultants were able to get to our problems quickly and deliver suggestions on solutions.

Camilla Evertsson, Chief Financial Officer, Dalarnas Insurance Company

Next step 

One opportunity within the development has been to include more pure statistics for injury management on a personal level that will be used for follow-up purposes and also to steer towards target numbers. The goal is to receive a red thread for the entire financial management from the overall goals for the business down to individual profit units.

Mercurs solution

System: Mercur Business Control

Processes: Budgeting, Forecasting, Detailed Personnel Budgeting, Monthly Reporting, Business Analysis, Goals and Key Figures

Other: Dalarnas Insurance Company uses Mercur Business Control with links to Hogia Economy and Hogia Salary and the electronic invoice management system Eyesys.

About the company: Dalarnas Insurance Company is one of the 24 local, independent and customer-owned Länsförsäkringar companies that cooperate through the jointly owned Länsförsäkringar AB with subsidiaries. Dalarnas Insurance Company offers a complete range of banking and insurance services for individuals, entrepreneurs and farmers alike. At seven offices in Dalarna, there are 260 employees.

Revenue: 497 MEUR 
Customers: ca 161 000
Employees: ca 260 

Mercur Solutions (UK) Limited - UK office

Mercur Solutions Limited
Ocean House, The Ring, Bracknell RG12 1AX, United Kingdom
+44 (0) 1344 388 025

Mercur Solutions AB - head office in Sweden

Mercur Solutions AB
Vretenvägen 13, SE-171 54 Solna
+46 (0)-459 69 00

 

Malmo Office

Stortorget 3, SE-211 22 Malmö
 

Gothenburg

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Mercur Solutions

A Swedish company with over 40 years of experience, delivering solutions for performance management and business intelligence.

 

 

 

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