BGSU Students Earn First Place Amongst Ohio Colleges in MAPFRE Case Competition

Written by Ellie Barnett, Schmidthorst Communications Intern

Schmidthorst College of Business students recently took home first place at the MAPFRE Case Competition. The team, comprised of Vincent Zhang, Nikolas Geier, Lexi Knoll and Ryan Brown, placed first over teams from Kent State University, The University of Akron and Mount Union University.

Similar to the Capsim simulation, the MAPFRE Case Competition consists of four major components: business decisions, reinsurance, expenses, and involvement distribution. The simulation consists of three rounds.

Overall, the teams were ranked based on market share, benefits, combined ratio and solvency. The BGSU team decided to compete heavily based on market share because it was the most highly-weighted area.

“MAPFRE helped us put classroom insurance knowledge into practice through game competition,” said team member, Vincent Zhang.

Business conditions in the simulation mimic complex real-world challenges. For each round, the team was tasked with analyzing the current position of their company and making decisions for both the auto and homeowners segments. The team had to decide premium increases for both renewals and new policies individually, commission rates for agents and the percentage of new business in each segment. 

“This was a great opportunity; our group was able to go into the competition with confidence from our prior insurance experiences and classes,” said Nikolas Geier, accounting major. “We all brought unique aspects that helped us work together to evaluate and come up with the best business ​decisions. MAPFRE was a great host, and I would recommend this competition to others in the future!”

The team feels lucky to have members who have interned in the insurance industry and currently took insurance-related courses at BGSU. The team said their enhanced knowledge of the insurance world gave them an advantage over other teams that may not have insurance programs at their schools.