Metropolitan Employee Benefits has added a further award to its trophy cabinet after scooping SA's inaugural “Imbasa Yegolide” (Golden Trophy) award for Risk Manager of the Year.
The award presented by the Principal Officers’ Association in association with UK-based publisher Global Pensions was judged by an esteemed panel including Allan Greenblo, editorial director of Today’s Trustee, Rob Rusconi and co-ordinator of pension and provident fund policy at Cosatu, Jan Mahlangu.
John Melville, Chief Executive of MetEB, says that the Golden Trophy award recognises the progress that the company has made in its group risk business over the last five years, and its leadership in fields of risk modelling and HIV/AIDS management.
“Risk underwriting is probably the most competitive industry in Employee Benefits with very small profit margins. MetEB has resisted the urge to engage in price wars and rather focuses on differentiating itself through fair pricing of benefits, meeting service level promises, fair assessment of disability claims, and helping its clients to contain death and disability rates from HIV/AIDS and other causes.
Melville says that MetEB has also made progress in the field of retirement fund administration, where it won Professional Management Review’s (PMR) Diamond Arrow award for Large Pension Fund Administrators in 2008. Its track record in the provision of capital protection investments and annuity products is also well respected.
Chris Cooke, Business Development Actuary at EB, says the group risk business model has a strong emphasis on three core areas: price, service and HIV/AIDS management.
Cooke says that EB has leveraged off Metropolitan’s strong actuarial and riskmodellingexpertise,which translates into a better understanding of the risks and the rating thereof.
“This risk management culture can be traced back to the 1980’s when Metropolitan pioneered HIV/AIDS modelling through the Doyle model, which has not only been a benchmark for tracking the epidemic, but also a tool for understanding the impact of intervention scenarios.With a significant percentage of deaths in many workplaces emanating from HIV-related causes, this is an area of fundamental importance to us and our clients,” says Cooke.
MetEB has also invested in a team of well-trained administration staff which operates in a carefully structured environment of processes, making use of workflow technology to track and manage service delivery standards on a daily basis. “Just like a Formula One team that tracks the performance of every part of the car to shave off a few tenths of a second, we consistently monitor every functional part of the business to improve service delivery and efficiency,” says Cooke.
Although the evaluation of disability claims is not always clear cut, MetEB has over the years built up a solid infrastructure of health professionals that manage the assessment of disability claims, and independent claims assessors are appointed to ensure fairness and objectivity.
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