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January 14, 2010
Kofax enables leading international financial group to automate claims processing for greater efficiency and reduced costs.
Established in London in 1848, Prudential plc is a leading international financial group providing retail financial services and fund management across the world, including the UK, the US, Asia and continental Europe.
Prudential has been writing life insurance in the United Kingdom for over 150 years. Today, Prudential has over 16 million customers worldwide and over $400 billion of funds under management.
In Asia, Prudential has life insurance and funds management operations across 12 markets – China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Prudential is Europe’s leading life insurance company, and is the largest life insurance company in Asia in terms of market coverage (within the top five market positions in Asia). Prudential has championed customer-centric products and services for over 80 years, supported by over 180,000 employees and agents across the region.
In insurance and financial services, the key service level measurements are in applications and claims processing. Most people have applied for insurance protection at some stage in their lives. If you have, you will recall the numerous forms that had to be completed and signed – and all of those forms were only for one person, applying for one particular type of insurance protection.
Put together all of the application forms from different applicants for different types of insurance protection, plus the numerous branches and countries involved, and the challenge immediately becomes apparent. The other main service area for the insurance industry is claims processing. It is not uncommon to hear customers rate an insurance company based on how many weeks or months it took to process their insurance claims. However, the reality is that most insurance companies are bogged down by a huge backlog of claims. Incessant ringing of telephones, frustrated and angry customers, stressed out employees, messy filing rooms, missing documents, lost files are all things that happen on a daily basis.
Claims processing employees know only too well the nightmare of frantically searching for files, with an impatient customer breathing down their necks. It is impossible to process claims without proper documents. As an insurance company is often measured by its speed of claims processing, it is imperative that a proper system and procedure is put in place.
True to their philosophy of Integrity, Fair Dealing and Service Excellence, Prudential places great emphasis on understanding the needs of their customers, and delivering products and services to meet those needs. In order to achieve this, Prudential realised that the solution required a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, the system must be able to process applications effectively, without compromising the quality of applications approved.
At the same time, it must also facilitate efficient claims processing. PCA Life Assurance Company Limited (PCA Life), Prudential’s insurance operations in Taiwan, engaged Kofax for consultation and implementation of a capture solution to streamline their business processes. Kofax was also to implement the same solution for their China mainland counterpart, Citic-Prudential.
Kofax did a gap study and implemented Kofax Intelligent Capture and Exchange, the foundation for Kofax’s strategy to help organizations streamline business processes, for PCA Life within two weeks. The solution included:
Kofax Capture, the world’s leading automated information capture platform and
Kofax Capture Network Server (KCNS), which captures documents and data from remote offices directly into the Kofax Capture system
PCA Life was able to capture and process their documents centrally in Taichung, China. Citic-Prudential, on the other hand, captured their documents in their three centers located in Suzhou, Guangzhou and Beijing, and then uploaded the documents to their headquarters in Guangzhou for processing.
With the implementation of Kofax Capture, PCA Life and Citic-Prudential were able to improve their response time to customers significantly. They also managed to reduce man-hours, thus cutting costs substantially. While they initially required up to three shifts for applications and claims processing, now the staff only worked one shift for the same workload. Documents and forms were captured in bulk, and only exception documents were routed for manual verification.
Due to Kofax Capture’s high accuracy of recognition, exception documents were few and far apart. Operations turnaround time was reduced, resulting in improved staff efficiency and reduced costs. The Kofax Intelligent Exchange & Transformation solution also resulted in greatly enhanced service levels and, finally, in delighted customers.
Another benefit of implementing Kofax Capture was the availability of information for customer inquiries. As data captured was immediately updated to the backend systems, retrieval of information was instant and easy. Attending to customer inquiries was now a breeze! Employees could now easily retrieve information on customers, including application status, claims status, payments, etc. Gone were the days of wading through piles of files and papers in messy filing rooms!
It has been quite a journey, a satisfying one, albeit. Converting from our previous solution to Kofax Capture, and subsequently to Kofax Capture Network Server – all proved to be strategic and appropriate moves. With Kofax Capture Network Server, we are poised for our business’ continuing and rapid expansion in mainland China. Since late 2005, we have been using Kofax Capture Network Server in all our major branches such as Guangzhou, Beijing, Suzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan as well as some other cities such as Wuxi, Shenzhen, Foshan and Dongguan. Kofax Capture Network Server enabled us to centralise our operations, said David Yeung, CIO of Citic-Prudential.
Kofax, the market leader in Information Capture and Exchange solutions, brings their customers unmatched experience and valuable consultation skills. Solutions are implemented rapidly, and deliver the desired results. Constant innovation and dedicated research ensure that their customers are always at the forefront of technology.