A privately held, family-owned homeowners insurance company, serving approximately 300,000 policy holders in the state of Florida had entrusted its printing and mailing operations to an outside supplier. It relied on this vendor to print and mail thousands of documents (checks, claims and policies) each month. This vendor fell short of the company’s expectations in several areas. Utilizing cut sheet method of printing the method posed several challenges such as, purchasing and storing expensive pre-printed stock and checks. Also, the process was slower than more sophisticated equipment like Ink Jets; causing backlogs. This technique was also costly; often double the price per sheet than continuous printing (supported by Ink Jets. The ability to print checks and claims together was another issue resulting in checks being printed and mailed separately from related policy or claims information. This meant that customers would receive checks and correspondence at different times; not to mention extra spending on postage to accommodate additional mailings.

Finally, the technology’s limited composition capabilities (i.e. black and white print and no design options) frustrated the company’s marketing efforts—customer correspondence was often rigid by design, difficult to read, and not visually appealing. Static templates and preprinted stocks eliminated the possibility of on the fly, customized marketing campaigns. Taking all of this into consideration, the company sought the services of a new provider with greater expertise and more sophisticated technology.

In 2016, Exela was selected to manage the printing of claims, policies, and checks, as well as notices and letters out of its Charlotte facility. One of the first initiatives was to upgrade to high-speed, full color ink jet printers; capable of handling millions of sheets on a monthly basis. A single, connected role of paper took the place of thousands of individual sheets. The checks were produced in-line with the rest of the associated documents and packaged and mailed together. The new machines presented a more financially sound solution for the company. It was no longer required to pre-print paper stock. The new 4-color printers also offered an expansive menu of design options, allowing the company to produce more readable and appealing marketing communications. Exela utilized a 2-D barcode that was placed on each piece of correspondence enabling each sheet to be tracked all the way through production and into the mail.

Entrusting all of its printing and mail operations to Exela was beneficial in several ways.

• Cost Savings: Utilizing new Ink Jet equipment, the company avoided costs associated with storing high volumes of paper and check stock, and print costs per sheet were significantly lower. In addition, postage was greatly reduced by the ability to combine documents and checks into a single package.
• Time Savings: Inkjet printers are capable of achieving much greater speeds on a daily, monthly and annual basis; with higher utilization rates and productivity. Redundancies were eliminated by combining packages right off of the printer.
• Enhanced Marketing: The new equipment offered an expansive menu of design options for more targeted and impactful full color marketing; and greater flexibility to accommodate customized print requests

As the company expands its customer base, and the volume of claims grows exponentially, Exela’s has the facilities, equipment and resources need to accommodate the company’s evolving requirements.

A Fortune 100 Property and Casualty Insurance Provider needed to overhaul its commercial lines underwriting support infrastructure and procedures. Its operations were spread out among seven different regions and managers, which posed several problems. At the top of the list were inconsistent practices, which opened the door for non-compliance with external and internal standards. Decentralized processes resulted in costly workflow redundancies and inefficiencies. Unreliable support caused the Underwriters to pick up those administrative duties; keeping them from their core responsibilities. Inefficient underwriting support also translated into longer policy development and processing times, with critical tasks often taking up to 2 weeks to complete. In all, the company’s underwriting support operations, including its staffing configuration, processes, and systems required a complete facelift. Without a solution, the company risked losing money and customers.

Lack of Workflow/Procedural Standardization and Consistency— Processes and workflows were not standardized among regional operations due to each division working in silos under separate management. Additionally, some individual workers were following different sets of procedures within the same office and in some cases relying on more than five different applications for researching historic policy information. There were no controls in place to monitor employee performance and ensure compliance and accountability, resulting in varying levels of performance between employees and offices. There was no clear chain of custody process, which was needed when operations moved from one phase to another. A lack of standard procedures and tasks lead to some work being duplicated by multiple employees.

Inconsistent Support— An unevenly distributed underwriting support workforce and inefficiencies in operations lead to a workload imbalance among groups. Often times, groups were burdened with more work than they could process, while, other times, there was not enough work to keep them busy. Also, the inability to move work between offices lead to one office being over six months behind in some work while other offices had bandwidth.

Lack of Internal Controls— There were not any standard auditing procedures to ensure compliance with requirements such as, timing of legal notifications, Agent and Insured notification requirements, correct form and mailing type, etc. Additionally, there were no measures in-place to monitor worker productivity, which contributed to delays and inefficient utilization of resources.

Outdated/ Labor Intensive Procedures— To worsen things, employees relied heavily on outdated, time consuming methods to collect, document and organize data. Inefficiencies were inherent in the system due to cutting and pasting content into Excel spreadsheets, and accessing and entering information into multiple databases. The systems did not have a way for the support staff to identify issues for the Underwriter’s review, forcing Underwriters to search through every record looking for issues.

Since 2005, Exela has provided a wide range of services to this company including, mail services, imaging, fleet management, and front office support. As its trusted partner, Exela was a natural choice to assume management of all of the company’s underwriting support operations. To improve underwriting support productivity, Exela documented all tasks and developed SLA and QA measures. Exela also reviewed the workflows with a Six Sigma black belt who identified multiple efficiency gains.

Some of the tasks that Exela assumed responsibility for included:

• Creating endorsements and examining forms for completeness and accuracy
• Accessing and researching historic policy information
• Looking up and correcting Vehicle Registration Number errors and transmitting information to the DMV
• Pulling weekly reports and distribution to Underwriting Managers to review system errors
• Inputting policy changes; renewals, reinstatements, non-renewals and cancellations (received by email) into computerized
• Receiving and routing checks to Billing Department on site Cash Department for Processing
• Monitoring mailbox for Risk Advisory notice emails from Claims and creating notification task for Underwriters
• Regularly responding to queries from insured, claims and agency personnel regarding forms, underwriting procedures and file information
• Adding and deleting drivers and vehicles from commercial fleet policies as well as running Motor Vehicle Records on all drivers

One of the company’s major initiatives when choosing to outsource its underwriting support activities was to consolidate operations into two locations. Adopting a more centralized business model helped in several ways. To begin with, the number of managers was reduced from 7 to 1; and a uniform set of procedures was established and followed by all workers at each site. The more concentrated configuration also facilitated a free flow of best-practices among employees and locations. Resource utilization was optimized by eliminating redundancies and re-allocating labor as needed.

• By consolidating into two sites the company realized savings of 15%, with additional savings of 12% from implementing best practices across the organization
• The time to complete administrative tasks was reduced from two weeks to 25 hours
• Before outsourcing its operations to Exela, the company was only achieving 50-60% of its SLAs. After Exela took over, more than 99% of SLAs have been met
• Relieved Underwriting Assistants of repetitive administrative tasks, such as handling DMV requests and reporting errors, etc.
• The elimination and/or consolidation of email boxes being monitored improved response time to agents and quicker creation of tasks for processing
• By eliminating work backlog and implementing more streamlined processes, customers received premium notices on a timely basis

The nation’s leading provider of dental insurance is a long-time customer of Exela. Serving more than 78 million Americans, their business requires printing, inserting, and mailing more than 8000 patient applications, Explanation of Benefit (EOB) statements, and checks on a weekly basis. The company decided its traditional way of doing things, with high costs and delays, needed to change. They were relying on an inefficient cut sheet method of check printing which involved feeding individual, unattached sheets of paper into the printer. Stacks of pre-printed checks were purchased and merged into the print-stream and electronically overlaid on each sheet of paper. Purchasing checks and storing reams of paper translated into unnecessary costs for the company. Excessive processing delays were another concern, as the cut sheet method was limited to a print speed of approximately 130 pages per minute. Consequently, it was taking longer to produce, insert, and mail checks to the customer.

The company had been utilizing a variety of Exela services over the past 15 years. It turned to Exela for strategic guidance as it sought to continuously improve business-critical processes. So when Exela introduced a more efficient and cost-effective approach, the company eagerly accepted the recommendation. By switching to inkjet technology, the company gained process efficiencies and measurable savings in both time and money. Unlike cut sheet printing, inkjet technology accommodates continuous batch printing with a single role of paper fed through the printer. Additionally, inkjet printer technology eliminates the need for multiple pre-printed checks.

Overall, the company benefited with technology that enabled their transition to more advanced and efficient print methods—leading to cost savings, faster turnaround times, and improved productivity.

Specifically:

• Inkjet printers are 5X faster than the company’s previous method.
• Turnaround time for weekly printing and processing decreased by 1 ½ days.
• Check costs decreased from approximately $16/1000 to $6.90/1000.
• Increased savings on paper and check stock.
• Increased savings on paper storage and associated inventory management.
• Improved productivity while decreasing the number of machine-operators needed.

An insurance company with headquarters in Chicago does not allow employees to bring their personal belongings into their new work environment. This restriction includes all personal items, such as: coats, briefcases, handbags, etcetera. Employees needed a place to store their belonging while they worked, but old-fashioned combinations or keyed lockers were not an ideal solution.

Exela’s Intelligent Lockers provided an convenient, intuitive, and secure storage option. Employees were assigned lockers of varying size to meet their individual needs. In addition to each employee establishing a PIN for personal locker access, sensors were included in the locker banks to recognize employee badges. This allowed employees to simply wave their badge in front of a sensor to access their locker, which prevented long lines from forming when many employees needed access their personal storage at the beginning and end of the workday.

• Personalized locker access via PIN or badge

• Quick and easy storage access

• No key to lose or unfamiliar numbers to memorize

• Improved visibility and reporting related to locker usage

• Enhanced employee experience

Fortune 500 supplemental insurance company faced serious mailroom challenges that were hampering business development. Millions of pieces of inbound mail were being processed daily through a people-based, labor-intensive workflow. Time sensitive mail and correspondence was often delayed due to a lack of process visibility and accountability. Inefficiencies in the mail processing workflow were also having a negative impact on call center volumes and overall turnaround times.

Exela overhauled the insurance company’s entire mailroom process to streamline claims, payment, and remittance processing. Legacy systems were replaced with a new technology stack that reduces staff, boost efficiency, and enables the future expansion of the system.

• PCH Global improves auto-adjudication, shortens cycle times, and enables bidirectional communication

• Digitization and data extraction from all incoming documents

• Mobile claims submission portal

• Premium payment reconciliation

• Additional opportunities for robotic process automation

• Improved claims processing service levels

• 30% reduction in costs

• Same-day payment processing

• Reduced reconciliation time

• Accelerated deposits

• Extended payment hours

• Increased transparency

• Enhanced client experience