NHBC ‘revolutionize’ their risk management
NHBC is the UK’s leading warranty and insurance provider for new homes, providing warranties for around 80% of all new homes built in the UK.
NHBC provides inspection services, guidance and training to builders, engaging with the industry, the Government and key stakeholders on all aspects of the housing agenda.
NHBC play a crucial role within the UK housing industry, with over 1.5 million homes currently covered by their insurance. This number is growing rapidly, with around 10,000 builders and developers choosing to register with NHBC each year so that they can offer the Buildmark warranty and insurance cover on the new homes they build.
It’s simple, quick, effective, and the Board absolutely love it.
The challenge
In order to maintain such high standards, NHBC identified a need to invest in software that allows the Enterprise Risk Management team to support each of the 30 functions within NHBC in managing their risks.
Critical to NHBC’s requirements was that they needed a system that enabled them to bring all risk information together, analyze it and format it in a way that was user friendly and understandable for business managers.
Tim Bailey, Enterprise Risk Manager of NHBC, highlights the challenges NHBC faced which led to the need for a technology-based solution.
“Previously, with 30 spreadsheets, we were unable to paint a holistic picture for managers about how the controls for the risks they’re responsible for are performing. There was no collaboration between functions, and we used to spend an awful lot of time with desk work, trying to put information together to make a coherent story.
This meant that we had great difficulty in creating awareness around the risk management programme; in stimulating engagement and buy-in of the benefits of proactive risk management from the various functional departments.”
Since implementing Ideagen Risk Management, Tim explains how NHBC have managed to completely turn this around.
“With Risk Management, the risk universe is integrated into the system so we can provide the entire risk management framework as a unified picture, which is revolutionary for us to be honest. Since introducing Risk Management, NHBC have saved approximately four months a year in data collection, report creation and chasing managers for updates.
Risk Management has made my life a lot easier, having moved from an Excel spreadsheet that I used for a long time.
“We now have a central focus for engagement with business managers across functional areas, and the quality of information we’re able to provide senior executives – as well as the board and non-executive directors – has vastly improved.
We’re able to paint a far richer story of what’s going on in the business and what needs consideration.”
A key area in which NHBC have seen the greatest improvements is in the management of incidents.
“In the past, we have had persistent problems costing the business month-after-month – even year-after-year. Now that we’ve rolled Risk Management out to the wider business, we’ve strengthened the engagement and awareness regarding incidents. We are getting far more incidents reported, and our method of remediation is far more effective.
“Risk Management has enabled us to effectively re-launch our incident review programme. It’s far more accessible and it’s far more visible in the business.”
This is clear in NHBC’s customer service department, where Customer Support Manager, Marie Caudery, uses Risk Management weekly to log incidents and manage actions.
The accessibility of risk information for Board members is another key area where NHBC have seen Risk Management deliver tangible business benefits.
Mark Gouldstone, Product Manager, has 27 risks spread across different parts of the business that he needs to present to the Board on a quarterly basis. Mark also spoke of the immediate impact Risk Management had on his daily work.
“I saw the benefits of using Risk Management straight away. It is really easy to use, provides me with full visibility of every incident, corresponding actions, and it gives me true ownership over the whole process.”
Alison Garner, Head of Customer Service at NHBC, uses Risk Management to escalate any concerns or risks to senior executives.
“Risk Management has made my life a lot easier, having moved from an Excel spreadsheet that I used for a long time.
It’s simple, quick, effective, and the Board absolutely love it. They understand it. As you can imagine, a Board pack is 50, 60, 70 pages long. With this, I’ll give them each a risk, I’ll give them a table, and best of all I can give them a summary of all the risks and what I’m doing about it. So, it’s very simple.”
Benefits
Greater awareness amongst managers of their responsibilities to risks
50% improvement in data collection and updating
Improved quality of information delivered to the board and non-executive directors
70% improvement in time spent chasing up
Higher number of incidents being reported with faster remediation time
50% improvement in production of reports and other outputs
Could Ideagen Risk Management improve your organizations response to risk?
Contact us to learn more about the benefits and how this could benefit your organization.