29 Aug Naming Conventions – Compliance Is Serious Business
As agencies continue to look for efficiency gains, one area where compliance is critical involves the correct use of the various system naming conventions. This issue sometimes does not receive the attention it deserves.
Documentation has been one of the most important loss prevention initiatives since the beginning of time (maybe not that long, but close). Every agency can probably attest that every E&O claim they have faced has been impacted by the quality of the documentation. Sometimes, the impact is positive. Sometimes it is not.
But documentation by itself is not the total issue. Where the documentation is in the system is typically just as important. For an agency to have good documentation of a client’s purchase decision is great, but what if no one can find that documentation? I remember this issue occurring with an E&O Plus agency several years ago. The client was offered the opportunity to secure flood coverage, but they refused. Shortly after that, the client suffered a flood loss and called the agency to report it. The client claimed they told the account executive to put the coverage into effect. The account executive remembers memorializing the conversation back to the client. Unfortunately, they could not find the documentation. It was not in the system where it was supposed to be. The E&O matter winds up going to trial. Literally 20 minutes before the trial was due to commence, the documentation was found, and this resolved the issue, and the trial was subsequently canceled. If the documentation had not been found, the agency might not have prevailed in the matter.
Naming conventions have a purpose. If staff put documentation of the various sources in the proper place, it will be much easier for anyone to find that material. While documentation serves the author who wrote or handled the matter, it is important to understand that documentation and putting the various materials in the proper place is also for the benefit of any other agency staff members who need to locate it. Documentation and the proper use of naming conventions are for more than just you. It is for your agency colleagues as well.
Most agencies have developed a “Naming Convention Tree” that details exactly what type of material is supposed to be put in each tab. The naming of the naming conventions (and the documents to be included) should be discussed and resolved internally – staff should not be allowed to name things the way they want arbitrarily. Once again, the goal is to locate a document easily (and efficiently).
Several years ago, I had an expert witness case involving a coverage dispute and what jurisdiction a claim needed to be filed in (it involved foreign liability coverage). I was responsible for locating an email from the carrier underwriter that passed judgment on this claim question. After pouring through thousands of emails, I found the “needle in the haystack,” and the carrier was forced to honor the claim. If this key email had been part of the client’s file, the matter would have been resolved quicker.
The bottom line is that naming conventions and strict agency compliance is a game changer and should be treated as such.