February 1998

IMAGING INSURES THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY

The insurance industry uses imaging to insure their business. Electronic documents are stored safely and accessed easily throughout departments. Insurance companies need imaging systems to deal with the large amounts of paper and the endless paper(less) shuffle.

Imaging systems can also reduce fraud. Digital cameras provide insurance companies with more information. Workflow systems let agents specialize in specific areas and route and track work more evenly. Document management systems give faster access to documents.

One area where major time savings occur is in processing and routing claims and applications. These tasks usually follow a clearly defined path. Insurers use workflow systems to track and route documents.

When it comes to claims and adjustment, insurance adjusters can use a digital camera to make a record of the damage. This image is stored on the computer with the claim form.

The uses of imaging are varied. Some departments are using imaging for ad hoc retrievals of such documents as resumes, personnel records, policy manuals, contracts, receipts or correspondence.

Regulatory requirements are another perfect use for imaging. When an insurance company does business, they have to file copies of many forms with the state regulators. These have to be updated when the forms change.

Insurance Company Captures Better Processing

New Jersey Manufacturer's Insurance Company (NJM) in West Trenton, is the fourth largest automobile insurer in New Jersey. They provide property and casualty insurance coverage for 470,000 auto passengers with 260,000 policies. NJM is using a document capture system to deal with the large amounts of incoming policy data from their customers.

The property and casualty renewal process is driven by the intensive handling and storage of paper. NJM has the burden of processing, storing and retrieving the thousands of documents. It is a major part of their day-to-day workload. NJM sends every customer a lengthy questionnaire to help them properly underwrite the risk and to comply with state regulations.

When the completed questionnaires are received, they're individually reviewed for changes, underwriting concerns and possible telephone inquiries. During the renewal process, staff must have easy access to documents to process paperwork and answer customers' inquiries. Not an easy task when you're manually tracking and processing two million pages a year.

NJM was also losing office space to an ever-increasing number of filing cabinets. They implemented a document capture system to tackle the growing volume of automobile renewal questionnaires and policy applications.

They chose Ascent Capture from Kofax (Irvine, CA 714-727-1733) to handle their document capture and TransMed Image Group (Sioux Falls, SD 605-357--8212) to integrate Ascent with a new IBM AS/400 Image Plus workflow process.

To handle the heavy scan volumes, TransMed configured Ascent Capture with three Ascent Scan Lite scan stations running Fujitsu (San Jose, CA 408-432-6333) 3096EX scanners, two Ascent Scan stations running Bell & Howell (Arlington Heights, IL 847-675-7600) 6338 scanners and two index stations.

NJM took advantage of Ascent's built-in barcoding and OCR features by redesigning their renewal questionnaires with barcodes. To build the interface to the AS/400 Image Plus workflow system from IBM (White Plains, NY 914-431-7676), TransMed used Ascent's Softbridge scripting language as their development tool.

NJM now scans 8,000 documents a day using Ascent Capture. When they receive completed renewal forms, each document is scanned, barcode recognized and indexed.

"The system has really paid off," says Paul Beiger, VP of NJM. "Since the barcodes have been added to the outgoing renewal questionnaires, we've almost totally eliminated manual indexing of each document. This has really boosted our productivity."

After the documents are scanned and indexed, they're released into the AS/400 Image Plus workflow application and placed into an electronic work process.

Exception cases, like unreadable policy applications, have numbers that have to be captured manually. These undergo a check digit process performed by Softbridge scripting, which validates the policy number.

Softbridge custom code was used to take advantage of Ascent's "sticky fields," which automatically populate index values that repeat across different documents. The policy year field is entered once and carried across the batch, eliminating the need to rekey information. When the renewal and application processing is complete, the documents are stored on optical platters.

"Ascent Capture has made a very positive impact at New Jersey Manufacurer's," says Beiger. "The renewal process is now completely automated, making processing documents fast and simple.

"The most important improvement is having simultaneous access between all the departments. This works especially well in a claims environment where information must be passed from a claim adjuster to legal staff and then to clerical staff. We've eliminated the paper chase."

The application and integration with their AS/400 system has been so successful that they are planning to expand the system to other application areas including auto claims and workers' compensation. A COLD processing solution is now being developed.

They are also using the system in their umbrella department to capture correspondence and underwriting documents. NJM is looking to move to a totally paperless underwriting folder. They also want to store digitized pictures of individual items, like jewelry, cars and homes in the underwriting folder. A project has been started with a body shop where they are taking pictures of damaged cars.

Kofax's Ascent Capture gives NJM's staff more control over their policy renewal process and has improved their customer service. NJM staff no longer compete with filing cabinets for space. They also enjoy having simultaneous access to documents. "As the volume of business has increased we've been able to maintain our high level of customer service," says Beiger.

Safeco Improves Sharing Environment

Safeco is a major national property and casualty insurer. They needed an imaging system that could be accessed by their independent insurance agents across the nation.

Safeco installed FileNET's (Costa Mesa, CA 714-966-3400) Enterprise Document Management (EDM) software. This network-based system provides claims adjusters with secure electronic storage and immediate access to all claim-related documents.

The system was developed to provide the company's 1,500 adjusters, in 15 offices throughout the United States, immediate access to the correct information at any time, regardless of their location.

"We wanted to move the work, not the people," says Kim Horton, systems analyst for Safeco. "We wanted our claims adjusters to have access to all the information in a claim file wherever they're working. Because it's so expensive to move paper, providing information online saves extraordinary amounts of money, time and frustration."

Corporate clients may conduct business with several different divisions, from multiple locations across the country. FileNET's EDM software gives workers from different divisions immediate access to accurate client information. Because of the large document load in the insurance industry, Safeco needed a robust information repository to handle archiving a vast number of documents in a wide range of file formats.

Eventually they expect the FileNET Mezzanine library to include anywhere from three to 12 million documents supporting at least half a million claims each year.

The FileNET EDM system reduces the time adjusters need to do their jobs. It also eliminates the need to store documents in paper format. This saves time spent processing claims and dollars spent in data warehouse space.

"We reduced expenses in many measurable ways," says Paul Barry, Safeco's assistant director of field operations. "We've saved hundreds of thousands of dollars off the cost of paper file jackets alone. FileNET Mezzanine gives our adjusters access to the data they need, when they need it. We have the ability to resolve issues promptly and are providing the best possible customer service."