One is a recent start-up that provides liability insurance for limousines and taxis in New York City. The other is a venerable mutual insurance firm that was formed in Canada in 1839, 28 years before the country was even confederated. Yet, Maya Assurance Co. and the Gore Mutual Insurance Co. are kindred spirits on at least one count: They both opted for comprehensive document management technology solutions to significantly reduce costs, restore order, improve customer service, impose control and boost compliance.
THE UPSTART: MAYA ASSURANCE
Contrary to what its first name might suggest, Maya Assurance isn't ancient, but rather was founded in 2006, shortly before many U.S. insurers were plunged into the economic abyss. Maya's first year was difficult, as it worked to hire employees and get its infrastructure into place. It found itself plowing resources into organizing filings for auditors, and it struggled to find files. Yet, rather than jettison the idea of insuring limo drivers and others that largely serve the well-heeled, Maya decided to go full-steam ahead by calling upon new document management technology.
Just a few years later, the Long Island City, N.Y.-based carrier is neither bankrupt nor continuing its wild-goose chases for documents. Now, the company boasts more than 20 employees, about 30 brokers and more than 2,000 policies issued.
To transform its files, in April 2008, Maya chose the document management solution CNG-SAFE from Cabinet NG, a software firm headquartered in Madison, Ala. At first, the carrier's goal was archiving, since it is required to maintain documents for six years.
However, its expectations quickly changed. "We realized we could leverage this for live files, underwriting and claims handling, and basically make our operations that much more efficient and save costs," explains KJ Singh, VP of Maya Assurance.
By late 2008, Maya had transformed itself into a 99% paperless office. (In fact, it would have been 100% because it's routing is entirely paperless, but it still has to scan live incoming mail.)
THE VETERAN: GORE MUTUAL
In contrast, Cambridge, Ontario-based Gore Mutual has been managing documents for more than a century, and back in 2000, it had already declared its goal of having a paperless office. A few years later it had become paperless in its frontline operations: It stored every document it produced and received (either electronically or manually) from brokers, insureds and claimants into a document management repository.
However, like Maya, it encountered great inefficiencies in the area of document management. Specifically, it had a legacy application processing document generation; users were creating letters in Microsoft Word without using a standard template and common spelling and language; and different business units were invoking different processes.
Typically, it took 20 minutes to create a letter. A staffer had to locate the correct letter template, draft the letter, print it, sign it, pass it to a supervisor for review, scan it into the document management repository and print out the mailing label for the customer or claimant. Not only was this wasteful, but it led to some concerns about compliance.
After looking for a way to boost automation and standardization, in 2008 Gore Mutual began implementing Exstream, an enterprisewide solution for creating communications from the Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm HP. Over an 18-month period, Gore Mutual converted its document generation toolset to Exstream, and implemented new functionality to its business units so that staffers could create letters on the fly.
REDUCED COSTS
Both carriers are representative of a rising tide of firms that are embracing document management technology, according to Jeff Goldberg, senior analyst at Celent, a Boston, Mass.-based financial research and consulting firm. "The values of modern systems are so far beyond the systems that were available five to six years or more ago," he says. Generally, vendor solutions now all feature service-oriented architecture, allow central-templating abilities and enable integration between archiving and generation to company systems. Much of carriers' spending has gone toward communication needs, with new solutions enabling them to manage brands and improve in generating letters, claims notices and other correspondence, says Goldberg.
A chief boon of document management technology is its ability to help carriers downsize, delay hiring or maintain current staff levels while boosting productivity. Maya, which also uses Cabinet NG's Batch product to scan documents, found that to be the case. Prior to working with Cabinet NG, Maya had two employees whose sole job was filing. With such salaries in the $20,000 to $30,000 range, the implementation led to some $40,000 to $60,000 savings in that area alone. Just three Maya employees in underwriting now manage more than 2,000 files. "If I did not have CNG, I would have needed at least three or four more people for file management and underwriting," says Singh.
Meanwhile, Gore Mutual was able to reduce the effort it takes to create a letter by 85%, from 20 minutes to under five minutes, according to Lisa Whaley-Chase, project manager for the carrier. "The individual does not have to leave their chair; they pull up a list of templates, they are customized, they have a few little fields that they have to modify (they don't have to modify entire content, as it might just be a date field, for example), and their signature is already on the letter," she says. "And when they complete it, it is stored automatically in a PDF, and it goes down into our print stream."
Through its overall document management transformation efforts-Gore Mutual uses a tool called Synergize from Richmond Hill, Ontario-based Microdea for storing and managing documents - the carrier has grown quickly. In the last 10 years it has more than doubled its total policies in force, while not having to double its workforce to match volumes. "A big contributing factor to that is the fact that we can handle everything paperless," says Sean Christie, VP of strategic projects at Gore Mutual. Yet, even with this growth, it has seen a decline in in-house anarchy.
IMPROVED COMPLIANCE
For Maya, its document management solution gives it confidence that it can "more intelligently defend our files properly," Singh says, for the software maintains autologs, user activities and document flow.
Maya's legal counsel and top management at the company now review files within three to five minutes, whereas in the past it could take them six to seven hours to locate a file. They also had to duplicate a hard copy, which generally bulged more than 500 pages, whereas today they just cut a CD. This almost-instant accessibility will be important during state reviews, for each three to five years all insurance companies in New York are subject to a market conduct examination.
North of the border in Canada, compliance issues also take center-stage at Gore Mutual, which will have to adapt to an array of legislative changes being imposed on auto insurers in Ontario.
"There are about 150 letters that need to be changed because they have changed the legislation," says Christie. "But because of these tools that we have implemented, we can make these changes faster than maybe some of the other companies, which are going to need a number of different resources to handle it."
RUNNING A TIGHT SHIP
Carriers similar to Gore Mutual and Maya also have benefited from the ability of document management technology to tighten their grip on operations. Access and control is important because the right people have to have access to the information they need to perform their jobs, but at the same time not allow them to get to things that aren't pertinent to them, says James True, VP of business development at Cabinet NG. "So a system that has good access and control capabilities enables you to centralize the documents." In light of the number of sensitive letters it sends out, Gore Mutual created an approval process whereby letters created by claims adjusters, underwriters and others must now first be approved by a supervisor, notes Whaley-Chase.
Gore Mutual also imposed greater control by moving away from its reliance on Microsoft Word. Prior to the company's HP implementation its staffers were simply manually creating letters in Word on their desktops.
"Claims is a very manual process typically for an insurer in the sense that claims representatives are typically documenting communication with the insured in Word," explains Tom Clayton, program manager of enterprise software at HP. "Word introduces so many challenges around [whether] they are insuring compliance, they are insuring consistent branding and messaging of the insurer's name and how they go to market. So introducing Word is really [introducing] a lack of control."
ENHANCED CUSTOMER SERVICE
The improved operations resulting from the document management technology implementations also have translated into improved customer service, as clients are now accustomed to quicker, more effective and more uniform responses.
"All we have to do when a broker and an insured calls in is put a policy number into a system and bang, we have access to every document that has ever been produced, sent or received around a policy or a claim," Christie says. "That kind of information is shared throughout the frontline. So you don't have to specifically talk to Jane Underwriter because she has that file; anybody in the organization can answer some simple questions."
Gore Mutual and Maya have come upon obstacles during their implementations. However, both reported minor concerns, including in the area of company-wide acceptance of the dramatic cultural shift to document management technology. Gore Mutual's employees had endured so many transformations and implementations in the company's paperless drive that the HP adoption was par for the course. One issue "grips" both companies, however: Staffers are getting a lack of exercise since they now perform everything from their desk and don't race around hunting down files. All things considered, it's not a bad problem to have.
Daniel Joelson is a business writer based in Arlington, Va.
Clearing Out Dead Wood
Both Gore Mutual and Maya Assurance have enjoyed far more orderly and spacious offices following their document management technology implementations. "When you come into our offices, you don't see the same thing you will see at other insurance companies, which are the stacks and stacks of paper on people's desks and filing cabinets clogging up the hallways," says Sean Christie, VP of strategic projects at Gore Mutual. "We have a very clean, efficient-looking environment, and that carries through to our frontline operation."
Prior to its implementation, Maya had used more than 20% of its office space for filing. Since then, it has dispensed with its filing cabinets and added workstations. "We have employees that have experience [working] with our competitors, and they are stunned at our efficiencies and our complete, functional office space in which we are able to operate because we are paperless," says KJ Singh, VP of Maya Assurance.
