Content area
Full Text
FEATURE
industry resources
ISA IS AN INDUSTRY-BASED VOLUNTARY ORGANISATION WHICH PROVIDES STATISTICS TO GIVE INSIGHT INTO INDUSTRY PERFORMANCE DRIVERS.
When Bill Mansfield (Commercial Union), Graeme Anschutz (QBE), Harold Levick (GRE), Peter Tanner (Australian Eagle) and Stephen Westwood (Australian Reinsurance) met with John Trowbridge and Geoff Atkins in late 1987 to discuss a possible successor to the Insurance Council statistical service that had just been closed down, it is doubtful that any of them foresaw the nature and extent of the change that would affect general insurance in Australia over the next twenty years.
Despite that uncertainty, they recognised that the collection and presentation of data about the performance of insurance business was important both for the development of the industry as a whole and for individual insurers. However, any such collection needed to balance timeliness, accuracy, confidentiality and simplicity so insurers would be prepared to participate and useful information could be produced.
A series of feasibility studies into collection of data for motor, house, commercial property and liability business were done under the oversight ofthat steering committee and reports were published. Following extensive discussions, 35 insurers representing about twenty per cent of private sector insurance premiums agreed to proceed with four classes of insurance data and Insurance Statistics Australia Limited was incorporated on 1 August 1988. Over the next two years, reports on various exposure and claim measures were brought into production, generating trends with which individual insurers could compare their own performance for benchmarking purposes.
Insurance Statistics Australia (ISA) has continued to adapt to the changing needs of its members. A number of feasibility studies have been undertaken into data collection for other classes of business. While some of these have not been used directly by ISA, they have contributed to development of industry data collection in a variety of ways. Most prominent of these was ISA's involvement in the development of specifications for the National Claims and Policy Database based on its own recently developed liability specifications.
Today, while the number of members is less than in 1988 with industry consolidation, the personal lines syndicates include insurers representing more than ninety per cent of personal lines motor and house insurance business in Australia, eighty per cent of medical indemnity and lenders'...