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Tqm Needs Assessment For Quality

TQM NEEDS ASSESMENT FOR QUALITY

TQM Needs Assessment for Quality
Improvement Paper
University of Phoenix
QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND PRODUCTIVITY/ MKT 449

March 7, 2007
Week Four

Needs Assessment for Quality Improvement Paper

Walker Financial Partners is an insurance and financial services organization. Through life insurance, disability insurance, annuities and investments we help both individuals and businesses with retirement planning, estate analysis, executive benefits, risk management, and other financial services. Often, an individual's health and/or financial situation must be evaluated for acceptance before we are able to offer coverage. A portion of this underwriting process takes place in the new business department at our Pasadena office. As our company has grown to over 60 full time agents generating more than 1200 policies per year, our local new business department has experienced difficulty handling the increased volume. We need to revise our current procedures to accommodate our growing organization.
The new business department handles several different things. We direct the initial stages of underwriting, which includes evaluating client for obvious declines, ensuring that all company and state required forms are present and properly completed, ordering medical records, and creating a master file before sending to our Home Office in Massachusetts. In addition to underwriting, we also follow the case through the complete underwriting process in Home Office, providing status to agents and obtaining additional requirements if needed. We also manage all policy owner service (POS) issues such as owner and beneficiary changes, premium payments, and policy inquiries among other service matters.
The problem that new business has encountered is the inability to effectively manage all the different aspects of the business as it grows. There is simply too much work to be handled by the current system. We experience a delay in application...