UCPB Gen is one of the
largest and strongest non-life insurance companies in the country today. On
January 1963, it has been established as Allied Guarantee Insurance Company,
Inc., and since 1989 it has been wholly owned by United Coconut Planters Life
Assurance Corporation (Cocolife). And it was then known as UCPB General
Insurance Co., Inc.
And how’s my stay in
UCPB Gen? First week of our on-the-job training went well though I can’t get
used to the fact that I have to wear that usual f*cking corporate attire for 25
days. Then, good news, for the second, third, and forth week, I am no longer
counting the remaining hours before going home. For this time, I’m filed up
with workloads. By the way, I am designated at the Reinsurance Department (RI
Dept) of UCPB Gen.
And I’m proud to say
that I’ve learned so many things after entering a department I was not even
aware of. The concept of reinsurance, as what I understand, is literally about
insuring again. For example, a company named let’s say, Company XYZ, is
insured to UCPB Gen for Php100, 000, 000.00. Since that amount is too big, UCPB
Gen would find its partner company/companies called reinsurer/s to share with
that insurance. There would be a certain percentage they would agree upon. Of
course, the reinsurers will have its share on the payment of Company XYZ.
But in case of loss, the reinsurers need to pay UCPB Gen (since UCPB Gen will
initially pay the insured, the Company XYZ). And to make this very long story
short, what I do as an intern is to monitor the payments of the reinsurers. The
reinsurers, of course would request for some documents that will prove that
there’s a loss, so I also monitor if they already received their documents.
It’s not actually a hard task to do, but would take such a very long time to
summarize all the balances, payments of respective reinsurers. It took me more
than one week before I finalized my record on the lacking documents to be
submitted to reinsurers for I have to check almost fifty (50) archfolders of
UCPB Gen (from 1996-2012). And for constructive criticism, one thing I noticed
why they find it hard to make a record of lacking documents for the reinsurers
is the loss of documents due to unorganized filing system. And of course, I can’t blame them for that
since there are really lots of papers to work on.
I also appreciate the
effort given by Ms. Jean Apostadero, my pseudo Supervisor who guided me in the
Reinsurance Department. With her help, I am confident to present my report on Payments and Balances of Loss Recoveries to
my supervisor and to the head of RI Dept.
It’s amazing to know
that the United Coco Planters Bank General Insurance Co., Inc. (UCPB Gen) will
sort of give us transportation allowance. About that allowance that will be
provided to us by the company, I am not sure if it’s really PhP100.00 per day
since we don’t have any formal conversation about it. But that’s the rough
estimate, I supposed.
In this process, I have
learned more of MS Excel since it’s widely used in many departments in an
insurance company. And I owe my sort of excel expertise to Math174 and Math175.
I suggest that there should be another course that would emphasize the use of
MS Excel including the Macros. For in my experiences, programming language such
as Fortran and Scilab are not that used widely. And for the Applied Mathematics
curriculum, I think, the Math Department should offer some courses focusing on
nonlife insurance. Just a suggestion! So that Amat students would be more
flexible on different fields.
But more than those
knowledge, what I learned more importantly is the importance of social
interaction. From that experience, I can proudly say that my pakikisama was then tested. Sooner or
later, I know I’ll be working with that kind of environment. All of us should
bare in mind that we can’t do everything just by ourselves. And sometimes, we
need those people who would guide us to the right path we should take.
I can say that this
practicum is more of an experience than a work. I may not yet still be prepared
for this kind of life but I know, someday, whether I like it or not, I will be. But for the mean time, let me first enjoy my hopefully one year remaining stay at eLBi.
