Caso manzana

Harvard Business School

9-692-015
Rev. January 30, 1997

Manzana Insurance - Fruitvale Branch (Abridged)
It was a Monday morning in early September 1991. Bill Pippin had been at Manzana for only
a week, but already he was thinking that perhaps he should have taken a different job. He gazed at a
note on his desk from John Lombard, his boss at the Fruitvale branch: "I'm giving a speech ata
conference on property insurance, so I'll be out of the office until next week. Please give this some
thought while I'm gone." The note was attached to a memo from Tom Jacobs, Manzana's senior vice
president for underwriting operations:
To: John Lombard
From: Tom Jacobs
Subject: Second Quarter Performance
The performance figures on Property Insurance for the second quarter have
just beencompleted, and Fruitvale is at the bottom of the list again. More important,
Golden Gate is killing us in your territory, and they have just announced a promise
of one-day turnaround time to all agents. If something isn't done immediately to
improve your operating performance, a lot of our agents are going to defect to
Golden Gate, and some of us are going to need new jobs. Here are some ofthe
numbers:
Manzana-Fruitvale

Golden Gate

This Quarter
This Year

This Quarter
Last Year

This Quarter
(estimated)

New policies

326

278

375

Endorsements

206

235

300

Renewals

1,063

1,253

1,400

6 days

5 days

2 days

Renewals late

44%

20%

NA

Renewal loss rate

47%

33%

15%

Turnaround time (average)

Something hasgot to be done about this. We're getting lots of complaints from agents about
your turnaround time, your percentage late figure is unacceptable, and we can't afford to lose almost
half of our renewal business every year.
John, ever since we eliminated an underwriting team in 1990, you've been
saying that you need more underwriters. But when we look at the volume of
Christopher Loch and DavidPaul Grant prepared the original version of this case (S-DS-87, Revised 5/90) under the
direction of Professor Michael J. Harrison, Stanford University. It is based on an earlier case by Karlyn Carnahan.
Professor Steven C. Wheelwright, Harvard University, prepared the abridged case as the basis for class discussion rather
than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of anadministrative situation.
Copyright © 1991 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and by the Board of Trustees of the Leland
Stanford Junior University. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685 or
write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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692-015

Manzana Insurance - Fruitvale Branch (Abridged)

business you are handling, it looks as though there's more than enough people in
your operations.
Fruitvale handles only property underwriting, and yourbranch typically
receives about 22 requests for new insurance, endorsements, or price quotes a day,
and handles another 17 or so renewals—let's call it 40 total requests per day. Based
on average processing times for each major task, Fruitvale should be able to handle
that easily. My rough calculations are as follows:
Operating Activities
Review and
Distribution

Underwriting

RatingPolicy
Writing

Daily Activity

40 requests

40 requests

40 requests

40 requests

Average Time
Required

40 min. each
40 requests
= 26.7 hours

30 min. each
40 requests
= 20 hours

70 min. each
40 requests
= 46.7 hours

55 min. each
30 requests
(75% of daily
requests)
=27.5 hours

Capacity Available

4 clerks
7.5 hrs/day
= 30 hours

3 teams
7.5 hrs/day
=...