AIG reviews

Ooops did I say "Only good thing" !!! There are other things tooo.... To Start with - Location : It Just takes 2hr's of travel in the morning to office and 3hr's to travel back home.To sum it up, you will spend only 5 Hours a day travelling To and Fro to the office from the centre of the city. An added bonus would be that your cab need not be on time and you may spend only an hour waiting to leave home. *To the AIG Team at Bangalore : Think about it , you have better options with much lesser traffic in the city of Bangalore which could save valuable time for employees.I understand this could take some time or longer. But what matters is are you even giving a thought about it. -Tool's used : A software to revolutionize the world of Data Entry , A tool to define latency and immaturity but with a goal exactly contradicting: GES. I agree to the fact that what the company is trying to achieve with GES is something big. But my honest opinion would be it is not serving the purpose. From selecting the platform to construct the tool, the UI and functions carried by the tool, everything is a mess. Kindly have a look at what currently GES is been doing and validate if this is what you really wanted: a)The tool more looks like an Kinder garden application form rather than a modelling tool. Clicking one by one button to input each data. With minimal userfriendly interface. It takes about 45 Min to an hour or more to model a simple 1 location account completely, which includes sending results to UW (This is excluding Triage process).This could have been done is Max 30 Min if it was using the vendor model's. b)The tool only acts has an interface between the vendor models and the user. Basically a Data entry tool. I would like to bring to your notice that the tool does not even do this correctly. A lot of data is not being bridged correctly to the back end. This could lead to incorrect generation of results (AAL's). eg.Use of usertxt columns for sublimits in the creation of MRI has turned out to be a blunder during bridging. d)This point is to the notice of all those who are concerned about data quality and Geocoding : If the quality has reduced, GES plays a significant role in it. e) After all the pain. The PO modelling fails and when an incident ticket is raised. The response received would be "Business error", Clone the PO and Submit for modeling. The Clone option literally doesn't me clone, the analyst is required to revisit the entire PO again. After all this the analyst is penalized for Productivity. To put it together: The effect of GES has been a reduction in productivity and quality. The only thing that has increased is the time that the analysts stretch late nights to help the UW. I am pretty sure everyone is aware of this. But none is ready to accept. I understand there is a lot of investment involved. What I am trying to put up is, try investing on the tool wisely after revisiting all the aspects of the tool again. It is never late. Change if we had gone wrong somewhere in the process. Even if it were to be the first step. I am for the Idea but not for how it is being implemented. I wish all the success to GES. -Management : 1) I really pity for the HR and Mangers at CoE, They have no decisional powers. They do not even have a proper say on promotions and increments of their employee's under them. Anything and everything requires an approval from overseas. 2) Actions by the HR team are very slow. 3)Managers : Do not be biased : Every individual come in with a dream. - Employee: The Company does not much worry about the employees. Bends and twists its laws as per company benefits. Do not take advantage of an employee waiting for changes, An innocence ignited is mightier than a Sandy Hurricane. Apart from all this , AIG is a great place to work with amazing crazy peers and a Library of insurance.

Expense management is a major company theme. They are asking all mid-level and senior managers to cut 3-5% of their budgets each year for the next 3 years. What that means is the company will continue with the practice of providing no annual inflationary raises. I think this started when the Gov't bailed AIG out and they practice has continued where AIG will raise the employee bonus a little each year but not the base salary. What this means is that if the employee gets an avg or above avg review while the company meets goals the employee will make a little more each year but the downside is it is all bonus that can quickly go away of an employee falls out of favor with his / her manager or their is an irregularity with AIG's earnings / the company does not meet its goals. AIG follows a style similar to what GE started with Top Grading for reviews. That means each year 20% of the employees are required to be at the lowest 2 review grades, 55% will be at the middle grade, and 25% will be at the top 2 grades. While this is not bad, the consequence is that in order to get a raise you need to earn a promotion which means you need to be in the top 25%. The 55% of the employees that are just doing their job and meeting their goals will not get any raise. Since 20% are required to be at the lowest 2 grades it can mean an employee doing his / her job decently can be pushed to that level if there are not enough low performers. This also leads to a lack of team work since everyone is focussed on their own goals and not as willing to help someone else that may be at a similar level and competing for an above average grade and promotion. There seems to be 1-2 reorganizations each year where the strategic path is slightly changed. While change can be good, in this case it leads to a less stable enviornment where employees are switching managers 1 to 2 times each year. There is a lack of career path programming for employees unless a manager takes an employee under his / her wing. As a global company many domestic jobs are headed overseas even for US based work. The focus does seem to be more on globalization for business and resources. Each group and department feels like a silo. In some comapnies you have a family atmophere where you feel connected to the company and its success. AIG is a very corporate environment that does not offer that. An example of the culture is around the corporate dress code. Officially it is business casual but in the NYC offices it is common for many to wear full suits and ties each and every day. It is very rare to see a golf shirt on anyone. In some of the suburban offices you see more casual dress but the culture does seem very formal and buttoned up.