The insurance business has for years constituted both a foundation and an important component of economic activity. Its significance in the conditions of the increasingly complicated and dynamically changing circumstances of economic behavior is steadily growing, generating new problems and setting up new challenges. One of these challenges is to meet the growing requirements and expectations of customers. This requires the efficient management of insurance companies, which in turn means the necessity of reaching for modern management ideas, primarily as related to the concept of process management and the tools related to it. In practice, you can meet two concepts, process management and management of processes. Process management is a broader term consistent with the concept of a process approach, because management of processes refers to selected processes and takes place also in organizations based on a functional approach. Process management is management in accordance with process orientation and process approach. The starting point for the implementation of process management as well as management of process is the identification of processes, a description of their structure and mutual relations. The article presents the concept of the process architecture of insurance activity (distinguishing management processes, basic processes and auxiliary processes), description of basic processes structure by management levels (strategic and operational) and presentations of relations between basic processes and other processes carried out in insurance companies.

AbstractThe significance of insurance activity is constantly growing, generating new problems and posing new challenges. One of these challenges is meeting the growing requirements and expectations of customers. This requires the efficient management of insurance companies, which means the necessity to resort to modern management concepts, particularly the concept of process management and its related instruments. The article presents the results of research carried out at the Faculty of Management of the Warsaw University of Technology regarding process management in insurance companies. The distinctness of insurance activity and its financial management is discussed and its following aspects presented: the identification of insurance activity processes encompassing the management of basic and auxiliary processes; the model of the financial management process of insurance companies; the relationship between the financial management process and other processes implemented in insurance companies; financial situation assessment measures for insurance companies, and the financial management process.

Financial systems worldwide are increasingly experiencing the mounting pressure of the technology-based financial innovations. Some of these developments are generating alternative financial structures existing parallelly to the “old” ones, whereas some others are simply replacing the “old” ones. Alternative intermediating institutions are gaining ground vis-à-vis incumbents, relying on their technological and market supremacy. The space of traditional financial intermediation requires new solutions to be more competitive. Some technological solutions provide additionally for the partial or entire disintermediation of the financial services, thus removing some existing transaction costs and matching directly economic agents. Digitalization and datafication, coupled with artificial intelligence, are offering immense new operational opportunities and economic benefits. On the other hand, they are also the source of new risks to the financial and economic systems, financial stability, national security, and consumer well-being, which need to be properly addressed. We review in this paper principal components of the current stream of technology-based financial innovations and their main drivers, as well as discuss major strategic issues and impacts that we are facing in this area.

The importance of insurance activity is constantly growing, generating new problems and setting new challenges. One of these challenges is to meet the growing requirements and expectations of customers. This requires the efficient management of insurance companies. This means the necessity of applying modern management concepts, first and foremost, the concept of process management and instruments related to this process. This article describes the results of research on process management in insurance companies operating in Poland that was conducted by the Faculty of Management at the Warsaw University of Technology and presents the concept of the identification of processes carried out in insurance companies encompassing management, basic and auxiliary processes, as well as the objectives of the processes and the relationships between the basic processes and other processes carried out in insurance companies.

Streszczenie: Celem opracowania jest przedstawienie koncepcji podejścia procesowego oraz jego adekwatności aplikacyjnej w różnych obszarach działalności zakładów ubezpieczeń, zwłaszcza w obszarze gospodarki finansowej. W ramach opracowania zaprezentowano mapę procesów realizowanych w zakładach ubezpieczeń oraz przykładowo pokazano analizę wybranego procesu podstawowego (procesu likwidacji szkód).Słowa kluczowe: procesy, procesy podstawowe, procesy pomocnicze, procesy zarządza-nia, procesy doskonalenia, likwidacja szkód, przepływy finansowe.Klasyfikacja JEL: G22. THE BUSINESS OF INSURANCE -PROCESS APPROACHAbstract: The aim of this paper is to present the concept of a process approach and its adequacy in different areas of insurance, especially in the area of financial management. In the framework of the study a processes map was carried out on the insurance businesses and, as an example, an analysis of the selected primary process (claims settlement process) were shown.