Categorising a United States based group insurance carrier’s broker network: A graph theoretic approach

Abstract

Researchers have studied business relationships from a variety of perspectives. Business relationships are important for a company to understand both on the supply side and on the distribution side, since they directly correlate with the economic outcome. On the supply side of a business, companies need to review their partners to ensure they are actively managing relationships to optimise their business processes and keep costs down. On the distribution side, companies need to understand what drives client purchase behaviour and how that affects their revenue streams. Furthermore, the number of partnerships a company may manage varies; however, given any volume, it is advantageous to manage the relationships as an aggregate collection. The purpose of this work is to review relationships within a company’s distribution network. As a result,this work establishes a model focused on three key objectives. First, this work observes the types of relationships within the network. Second, this work understands how those relationships change over time. Third, this work proposes a method for quantifying those changes within the relationships. By implementing this model, a company will be able to use it as a tool to manage their relationships as a portfolio