Risk management is a value-added service provided by Zurich, and a direct outgrowth of its main business, which is underwriting commercial property-casualty, health and accident insurance. Take workers compensation, for example, which is Zurich's largest book of business in North America. The volume of workers compensation claims at a large organisation can run to hundreds, even thousands, per month. When big companies like this buy coverage, in essence they're paying Zurich a fee to handle those lawsuits and claims for them. Customers are willing to pay Zurich's hefty insurance premiums because they know that the millions they're spending is nothing compared to what the lawsuits and workers compensation claims are worth in potential payouts.

Nevertheless, a few million is a lot to pay for insurance no matter who you are. So Zurich justifies its high premiums with value added services, like risk analysis. Such services are aimed primarily at large organisations in areas like manufacturing and heavy industry, companies that own a number of factories or workshops where data can be collected and later sliced and diced to discern useful trends. "Trends are very important to them," says Colletti. "If they see a trend on an assembly line - a lot of back strains for instance - then the faster they can identify that trend and make a change, the sooner their losses will go down overall."

Colletti didn't have to look hard to find the source of the trouble with the existing risk management service. Every month Zurich would produce a new CD-ROM for each client, featuring all the data on workplace injuries, accidents and other similar claims information for that month. From the client end, a corporate risk assessor would load the CD-ROM on a computer running Zurich's Risk Manager Workstation software. They would then use the system's small array of reporting tools to spot patterns in claims activity, like which areas of a factory have the highest number of accidents and injuries.

The problem? As Colletti frankly admits, "by the time [the data] was loaded, the information was as much as 45 days old". Collating and presenting the information on the CD-ROMs, as well as packaging and shipping them out to clients was costing Zurich close to $US400,000 a year. The software was limited in other capacities too, providing clients with only a handful of pre-packaged reports that could be used to analyse the data.

For Colletti, the problem with the risk management service was much more serious than a mere drop in service levels - it cut right to the heart of the value proposition Zurich was presenting to its most vital clients. "We may not be the cheapest insurance up front, but overall loss costs will be cheaper if you go with Zurich because of the services we provide - among them risk intelligence," he says. "That's the pitch Zurich insurance makes to its customers."

Once the focus group brought the timing issue to the fore, Colletti was keen to remedy the situation - fast. Colletti and other Zurich managers quickly hunkered down to work out a solution. "It was clear the only way we could get the data to our clients on a daily basis was to use the Internet," Colletti says, "so we started looking at different products on the market."