HCC - 06/17 - The Provision of an Insurance Claims Handling System and a Risk Management Information System

Tender description

Introduction Hertfordshire County Council (the \"Council\") is a large shire county in the south-east of England with a population of 1.2 million. Hertfordshire is a two-tier authority with 10 district and borough councils providing complementary local services to residents. The Council provides social care for adults and children, schools and education, public libraries, public health (from April 2013), highway and road maintenance, environmental services, trading standards and household waste sites as well as a fire and rescue service. Project Background Insurance The Insurance Section, situated within Herts Finance, is responsible for ensuring that the authority is adequately protected against its Key Financial risks by means of external or internal insurance policies. The section handles in excess of 3500 claims each financial year varying in value and complexity. An effective and flexible system is essential to the monitoring of Hertfordshire County Council's policies and to the recording and daily handling of the claims, financial liabilities and claims experiences incurred by the authority whilst undertaking duties and powers delegated to it. The Council currently requires insurance reports for a variety of purposes, including identifications of claim trends, risk management activities and facilitating reconciliation of the insurer's imprest accounts. Risk Management Information System (RMIS) The Performance and Risk Management team is situated within the Intelligence function. Responsibilities include the management of the risk management framework - providing a robust and consistent risk management approach and system and offering training and direct support to services; this includes the management and maintenance of the Risk Management Information System. The RMIS currently holds a large number of archived records and active risks with a total of some 1,530 risk records. This includes 35 active risks at a corporate level, a further 91 at a service level, and 159 at a programme/project level. It also holds key business information on the key business continuity plans for the organisation. The current RMIS has 415 active users, which are made up of the Council's employees and some partner organisations, with a further 87 inactive users. The Performance and Risk management team and other users regularly produce a variety of filtered reports from the current system to help management make more informed decisions about the key uncertainties affecting the organisation's future and to provide assurance on risk management practice.