Two business units, one constrained integration team
You are BRM for an insurance group with two large business units, Claims and Underwriting. Both have submitted demand for the same four-person integration team in Q3. Claims wants real-time fraud checks before a regulatory deadline, with a business case showing £2.1m annual loss avoidance; it was promised work last year that slipped by two quarters and its satisfaction score with IT is 2.9 out of 5. Underwriting wants a broker API that it forecasts will open £3.5m of new premium, but no contract depends on it and the forecast is not independently validated. The team can deliver roughly one and a half of the two pieces of work in Q3. Both sponsors have escalated to the COO, who has asked you for a recommendation by Friday.
1. How do you build the recommendation, and what does BRM contribute that a portfolio office would not?
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BRM's contribution is to separate the certainty of value from its size, and to weigh the relationship history explicitly.
- Claims: £2.1m loss avoidance, a regulatory deadline, and a broken promise last year. The commitment risk is high and the cost of another slip is relationship damage, not just delay.
- Underwriting: larger forecast (£3.5m) but unvalidated and not contractually committed. Ask for the assumptions and test the forecast with finance before ranking it above a regulatory commitment.
- Options, not a binary: deliver fraud checks in Q3, phase the broker API into Q4, and buy temporary integration capacity if the business case supports it.
- Agree the criteria with both sponsors before Friday, so the recommendation is judged against shared criteria rather than who escalated loudest.
A portfolio office can rank; BRM must also explain the relationship consequence of each option.
2. What do you do about the escalation to the COO and the damaged relationship with Claims?
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An escalation to the COO is not a failure of the relationship; it is a signal that the normal route did not resolve the conflict. Manage it deliberately.
- Pre-brief both sponsors so neither hears the recommendation first in the room. Send the criteria and the options in advance.
- Own the earlier slip with Claims without using it as leverage. Acknowledge it, state what has changed, and avoid implying that past failure earns priority by itself.
- Keep the decision and the relationship separate. If Claims does not get everything, agree what it does get, when, and how it will be told.
- Give the COO a decision, not a dilemma: a recommended option, the risk of the alternative, and the conditions under which you would revisit.
Afterwards, restore a normal review rhythm with both units; an escalation that becomes the default route erodes the BRM relationship.
3. What would make this recommendation wrong in hindsight, and how would you detect it?
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Three failure modes are worth naming now.
- Over-weighting certainty and losing the growth option. If Underwriting's forecast turns out to be sound, a Q4 delay may cost more than the fraud-check slip would have. Set a review point: if broker pilot evidence appears by mid-Q3, rebalance capacity.
- Under-weighting the relationship damage. If Claims is told again that it is delayed, the next escalation will not come through you. Track whether the sponsor treats you as a route or an obstacle.
- Buying capacity without a business case. Temporary capacity is only justified if the combined value exceeds its cost.
Write the triggers into the decision record and review at the next service review, so the decision remains a judgement that can be corrected rather than a verdict.