By Rocky Krivijanski
Over the past three years, NICB has been committed to increasing the frequency, volume, and utility of the intelligence products we create and share with members and law enforcement. In this special Leader Perspective, we’re talking with Jessica Rust, Director of Data Analytics, and Raun Bass, Intelligence Production Manager, from the OIA team about the new products we’ve rolled out, how the team has evolved to create these new products, and how NICB is making sure our stakeholders receive the information they need, when they need it.
NICB has put an increased emphasis on data-driven intelligence and analysis in recent years. Can you talk about some of NICB’s most important intelligence products?
RB: I see our written intelligence products fitting into three different buckets. The first are the high-level strategic threat assessments, which are more in-depth and less frequent. We typically aim for six to seven threat assessments per year. Those are true deep dives and risk assessments into a broad fraud topic such as medical fraud. The second type of product is our analytic reports. This year our legacy “ForeCASTs” were recalibrated into true “predictive analytics” reports. We’re now looking 6 months into the future and providing predictions on specific insurance crime trends. We’ve spent a lot of time and effort leaning into predictive analytics because we know how valuable that analysis is for our members. Additionally, we launched the “Trend” report this year, which is focused on the descriptive analytics traditionally covered by our legacy “ForeCAST” reports. The last bucket is our high-velocity bulletins, which include our new “Insight” reports that identify emerging fraud schemes and our “ForeWARN” alerts that discuss specific cases about fraudsters. We do more than a thousand of these types of bulletins per year.
Who are your audiences for these intelligence products?
JR: Certainly, a large majority of our intelligence products are designed for our member insurance companies. We know that our members are looking to NICB for the type of intelligence that only we can provide. We also have a number of intelligence products designed specifically for law enforcement partners. What I think is most interesting in our new approach is that we’re creating products for our own internal teams to use. Both field agents and intelligence analysts at headquarters are sharing intelligence reports to ensure our teams are aligned in our efforts. We also have some products that are designed for our Government Affairs team as they engage with elected officials at the local, state, and federal levels.
With so many products and a wide range of audiences, how does your team keep its focus and ensure you’re staying on track?
JR: We make it a priority to focus on those respective audiences to ensure they’re getting what they need. Many of our stakeholder groups want the same or similar data. Something like a trend report can be used for multiple stakeholders, reformatted slightly to tailor to what that specific audience cares most about. We’ve spent a lot of time rethinking how we deliver our products to make them as user-friendly as possible. Providing executive summaries to give our readers the “why” up front is one change that has received very positive feedback.
RB: Just to add to that, we’ve really focused on what I’d call “de-siloing” our analyst families. We’re bringing all of our units together as one cohesive team. We’re making comprehensive decisions on topics for intelligence products and ensuring a certain stakeholder group doesn’t fall through the cracks. We’ve also utilized our field analysts to talk to our stakeholders. Our field team members are great communicators, and we’ve leveraged that capability to conduct
high-level focus group meetings to understand what stakeholders want and need in our intelligence reports.
What are you most excited about given your role in this new approach for intelligence products?
JR: It’s really exciting to come in with fresh eyes and take a hard look at all of our processes and products. It’s been fun to follow this process and try new actions. We really have focused not only on creating more reports but also reports that work better for our members. And our increased collaboration with our field team and the other sides of our operations function has been amazing.
RB: I couldn’t agree more. I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve been able to evolve our team to create a better product for our members and law enforcement partners, ultimately providing them with the type of intelligence that allows them to make better policy and strategic resource decisions.
Exclusive Online Content
Here's an exclusive video with Jessica discussing more on the importance of NICB's intelligence products.