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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 at a 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 been completed, 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 of the numbers:
Manzana-Fruitvale This Quarter This Year New policies Endorsements Renewals Turnaround time (average) Renewals late Renewal loss rate 326 206 1,063 6 days 44% 47% This Quarter Last Year 278 235 1,253 5 days 20% 33% Golden Gate This Quarter (estimated) 375 300 1,400 2 days NA 15%

Something has got 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 David Paul

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