Active Agenda is a powerful tool to help an organization reduce its Total Cost of Risk. The “Cost of Risk” (CoR) concept dates back to 1962 when Douglass A. Barlow, a past president of Risk Insurance Management Society (RIMS), originally formulated the method for capturing and trending risk costs. The concept was formalized by the Institute of Management Accountants and RIMS with the publication of a standard of management accounting statement titled Practices and Techniques: Internal Accounting and Classification of Risk Management Costs.

That statement defines risk management costs as applying to three exposures: property, tort liability, and occupational disease or injury. Within these three exposures are six types of costs: insurance premiums; retained losses; internal administration; outside services; financial guarantees; and fees, taxes, and other similar expenses. Active Agenda is designed to utilize Barlow's “cost of risk” concept and extends its use to other business risks; such as, operational efficiency, labor relations, product quality and other operational risks.

Low Total Cost of Ownership: Active Agenda is an open source software application that substantially reduces the administrative, “cost of risk”. Because it is an open source application, organizations are welcome to download the code and operate Active Agenda for FREE under a Reciprocal Public License. If an organization prefers not to reciprocate code modifications under our Reciprocal Public License, a commercial license can be purchased. Since Active Agenda is open source application, organizations are free to hire the most cost effective and qualified resources they desire to assist with implementation or train internal staff as deployment experts.

Suggestion: Insurance brokers receive handsome commissions, and more and more organizations are demanding real value in exchange for these commissions. Why not take control of how ‘your commissions’ are allocated by requiring that your insurance broker include an Active Agenda implementation as part of their ‘value added’ services?

Streamlined Administration: Most organizations manage complex risks from a functional or “silo” approach. They tend to identify and address risks by functional area. As practicing risk managers, we observed this highly redundant, and inefficient business practice, and designed Active Agenda to manage redundant business risk utilizing single, centralized, systems across the enterprise. Active Agenda can streamline risk administration and enhance business continuity.

Reduced Costs of Insurance: Demonstrations of Active Agenda to the largest reinsurance companies in the world have resulted in statements like “we would give a 10% premium discount to anyone actively using this product.” The reinsurers recognize Active Agenda's ability to help organizations manage predictive indicators of loss, and losses of lower severity, as a means of preempting more significant, more costly losses. Any organization implementing Active Agenda would be well served by populating the system in advance of renewal discussions with insurance carriers and developing a strategic plan of attack, which can also be tracked by Active Agenda.

The alternative insurance market continues to grow in popularity. The alternative market allows businesses to retain investment income and return the benefits of control efforts to the organization. Active Agenda can help companies prepare for, and make the transition to, the alternative market with greater confidence.

Lower Cost of Loss: BOTTOM LINE - Active Agenda allows organizations to aggressively identify, track, and trend, pre-loss issues and costs using standardized systems. By easing the cost and administrative burden of collecting information, organizations can substantially increase their knowledge of risk and improve their ability to reduce exposures before expensive losses materialize.