- Customer Success Story -

FROM MANUAL TO AUTOMATED

The Baldwin Group’s Leap to Automation, Enhancing Accuracy and Saving Time

Discover how The Baldwin Group, an independent insurance distribution firm, enhanced their revenue accrual process with Arbutus, achieving significant time savings, improved  accuracy, and enhanced SOX compliance.

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Risk management, insurance, employee benefits, and wealth management advisors – simplifying complexity to protect what’s possible.

The Baldwin Group became a publicly traded company in 2019 and rapidly grew organically and through various partnerships between 2020 through 2021 with carefully selected insurance brokerage companies that operate with the same core values and have demonstrated a history of prioritizing client satisfaction & colleague appreciation. Along with the growth model, The Baldwin Group invested in technology to integrate the businesses, streamline processes, and focus on compliance with standard practices and regulations.

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Scope

 
After all significant partnerships had integrated into The Baldwin Group’s operating software, a decision was made to have a few partnerships remain on their existing platform by design for a set time. For example, a couple of the partners had acquired software platforms prior to joining the firm which were core to their operations; therefore, leadership concluded that certain
partnerships should on an interim basis continue with their software platform to minimize disruption to their operating needs until an appropriate transition time could be achieved. In such cases, leadership still evaluated the processes and procedures at these partnerships and invested in alternative automation solutions where necessary. 
 
The Baldwin Group adheres to Sarbanes-Oxley (“SOX”) requirements that requires well- developed and operational feasible internal
controls over financial reporting. The Baldwin Group leveraged Arbutus Analyzer to streamline and automate the monthly revenue
accrual process for one of the partnerships that kept its legacy technology stack. The project aimed to automate the manual calculation of the partnership’s revenue accrual, derived from a percentage of revenue multiplied by policy premiums. The pre-existing manual
process was time-consuming due to the complexity and volume of policies. The manual process also led to unnecessary clerical errors that required additional time to correct before recording the month-end journal entries. Arbutus addressed these issues with an automated process that applies contractual rates to individual policies, still ensuring accurate financial report while saving valuable time spent on MS Excel calculations and researching anomalies.
 

Challenges

Prior to joining The Baldwin Group, this partnership’s manual calculation process presented several hurdles. The process was time-consuming, explicit supporting documents were difficult to obtain, and it posed auditable SOX compliance concerns. The introduction of Arbutus Technology provided a solution and mitigated these issues which resulted in a more robust, consistent and transparent computation system.

Objectives

The goal was to replace the manual estimated system with a tailored, contractual, and individualized calculation approach. The objectives included enhancing accuracy, applying individual rates to policies, and better ensuring SOX compliance, all while saving valuable time.

 

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Outcome

By implementing Arbutus Technology, The Baldwin Group’s accounting team was able to create specific rate tables using contracts and applying the rates to individual policies based on a set of criteria. Additionally, the new system led to the identification and correction of minor errors in the previous manual calculations, thus saving up to five business days of work each month.

Results

Analyzer proved to be significantly more efficient, reducing manual calculation time each month of up to five days to less than half a day. This has translated into a smoother and quicker month-end close. The transition from manual calculation to automation was well received by the client and process owners, with praises for its simplicity, accuracy and productivity boost. The processes owner is extremely satisfied as automation replaced a manual estimated process that was very difficult to explain or support and that took longer to complete. In addition, auditability of the control and process is simpler and more efficient as well.

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Conclusions

By replacing a manual estimated calculation of revenue accrual with Arbutus, we achieved a more accurate and quicker month-end close. The impact is significant towards SOX compliance, simpler processes and overall time savings. As we continually review our
processes for efficiency and automation, Analyzer is our preferred software for consistent processes with significant volume that
currently relies on MS Excel formulas and calculations.