ABC - easy as 123

Formed in 1867, Co-operative Insurance Services (CIS) is the onlyco-operative in the insurance industry and has 4.5m customers. Recently,as the firm realised that its market was becoming more competitive in thewake of successive mergers and new entrants, chief accountant DavidGrattan saw a need to develop a better understanding of how the firm'sindividual products were incurring costs.

Andrew Booth, costing accountant at CIS, had previous experience of amethodology known as activity-based cos