Identification and prioritization of operational audit indicators in the field of insurance

In today's world, insurance is one of the most important economic sectors in society, which, in addition to facilitating international relations, plays a tremendous role in preventing the realization of risk and providing peace of mind for various activities. All companies tend to focus on increasing their operational efficiency and effectiveness and implement various information devices to maximize their performance and goals. Operational audit is also a regular and methodical process of evaluating the economic effectiveness  and efficiency  of the organization's operations and reporting the evaluation results along with practical suggestions to competent persons to improve operations, but despite the legal requirement to implement operational audit according to Article 218 of the 5th National Development Program Law, operational audit is carried out. In practice, it has faced problems in institutions and companies.

The current research is applied in terms of its purpose and in terms of a mixed (qualitative-quantitative) approach, which was first collected by reviewing the literature and then distributed among forty experts in the field of insurance and auditing through a questionnaire. Ranking was done by TOPSIS Fuzzy.

The results show the approval of all dimensions, components and indicators identified with a threshold limit of 0.5.

 It was proved that in the efficiency component, the net indices of issued premiums, the claim collection period and the loss ratio have taken the first to third rankings. Also, in the effectiveness component, the indicators of customers’ satisfaction, the investment profit of the company's portfolio share from the total market portfolio have the first to third rankings, in the economic efficiency component, the indicators of the ratio of operational, administrative and general expenses to operating income, the total price (the total price of the insurance policy) to sales and the loss ratio (the ratio of the damage paid to the insurance premium received during the same period) have occupied the first to third rankings and finally, in the environmental component, the use of electronic technology in the services of the insurance industry is the only identified indicator. Finally, it was determined that in the field of insurance, operational audit indicators at the general level (4 components: efficiency, effectiveness, economic and environmental efficiency), respectively, the indicators of the ratio of operational, administrative and general expenses to operating income, net premiums issued, the use of electronic technology in the services of the insurance industry, and the collection period of claims are ranked first to fourth, respectively.