NYPIUA was organized in 1968 pursuant to the laws of the State of New York to provide basic property insurance (fire, extended coverage, vandalism and malicious mischief, loss of rents and business interruption) to those consumers who were unable to obtain such coverage in the voluntary market. The Association consists of all insurers authorized under the Insurance Law to write and engaged in writing fire and extended coverage insurance, including insurers covering such perils in homeowners and commercial multiple peril package policies.
Challenge
In the insurance business, data is critically important.
Due to the nature of their business – New York Property Insurance Underwriting Association (NYPIUA) receives a large volume of paper-based documentation on a daily basis.
All of these documents had to be scanned and uploaded, which was time consuming for NYPIUA’s 50 full time employees who handle over 50,000 policies each year. Additionally, all checks and sensitive information had to be manually redacted, then scanned – or re-scanned – into the system.
The process of preparing and uploading documents to support a policy or claim required multiple steps and users were tasked with memorizing complicated codes in order to effectively navigate the system. All notes on files also had to be maintained on paper due to the existing, legacy document management system’s limited capabilities.
NYPIUA had physical inboxes full of paper spread around its two offices. The company needed a way to digitize its processes and create replication of its environments across both locations to ensure files were safe and easy to access in case of disaster.
Solution
NYPIUA, with the help of Technology Services Group (TSG), chose Alfresco over other competitors for it’s modern content repository and TSG’s High Performance Interface (HPI) as its new policy and claim management solution because of its robust case file management capabilities, open architecture, and impressive streamlined web-based user interface.
“Alfresco was so easy to implement and use that employees were proficiently using the system in less than two weeks,” says Dane Austin, president of NYPIUA.
Third parties can now submit claims and other requests through the NYPIUA website. Using TSG’s OpenContent as a connector, content is uploaded into Alfresco and claim folders are automatically generated. Through integration with TSG’s OpenMigrate solution, all e-mail sent to a specific e-mail address is also uploaded automatically.
“Alfresco has been a great partner here in being able to provide a robust, enterprise capable system with fault tolerance along with the modern technologies we look for in an enterprise content management tool for our customers,” said Dave Giordano, president of TSG.
Results
With a combination of Alfresco, HPI, OpenMigrate, and a high volume scanning solution, NYPIUA has been able to automate many of its manual processes and users are able to more easily navigate between policies and related claims and customers.
Today, all NYPIUA employees use HPI and Alfresco to manage their policies and claims, which has dramatically increased productivity and collaboration.
A large volume scanner quickly scans all paper mail, identifying checks and regular documents, and digitized mail and checks are automatically uploaded into Alfresco on a schedule. Users can also redact checks and other sensitive information digitally, rather than having to redact it by hand and then scan it into the system.
“Alfresco is tomorrow’s technology, today,” says Austin. “It’s a lot better than the system we had before and has empowered our people with the information they need to better serve our customers.”
