Putting Paper in Its Place: CSC Helps with Paperless Filing

Imagine having to file a million documents. If you could build a stack of one million sheets of ordinary typing paper, the pile would reach 333 feet high-longer than a football field. That's a lot of filing space.

Now, take that amount and multiply it by 100, and you get a sense of the volume of insurance documents that arrive at CSC, which provides document imaging and storage services for some of the nation's largest carriers.

Last year, Farmers Insurance Group, the United States' third-largest property and casualty carrier, decided to begin imaging insurance documents and storing them electronically. Having worked with CSC in another outsourcing engagement, Farmers Insurance talked to CSC about outsourcing the voluminous imaging work.

"We already had a relationship with CSC, which manages our assigned risk processing," said Carol Jason, Farmers' director of Personal Lines Support. "We entered into an outsourcing relationship with CSC to manage the imaging, archiving and retrieval of certain documents in 2001. And we have recently extended that contract."

According to CSC's Dick Childress, one of the keys to the success of the imaging project was getting it implemented rapidly.

"CSC has been providing imaging services for years, so we already have all of the infrastructure and personnel in place to get a company like Farmers Insurance up and running quickly," said Childress, CSC account executive. "We told them, 'We can do this and we can do this in less than a month.' " And CSC did. CSC had Farmers up and running within a month.

Taking Advantage of Scale

CSC has extensive experience in providing imaging services for P&C and Life insurance companies. More than 100 million images of policies, endorsements, and other documents are stored on CSC's digital archives, and up to 25,000 of those documents are retrieved each week.

More than 3,000 users are now accessing electronic files stored by CSC, and that number is expected to grow as more carriers such as Farmers Insurance opt for outsourcing. What's the secret to the program's success? CSC's use of skilled resources and the latest archive and retrieval technology.

CSC's imaging services take on a wide variety of jobs. In some cases, a company's entire book of business has been sent in truckloads to CSC's imaging service center in Columbia, South Carolina. In other cases, a carrier may only send specialized documents generated from multiple locations.

One national insurer needed a better way to centralize the storage of state-mandated signature forms, such as waivers and acknowledgments. All of these forms require a signature to make the document binding. And that means it has to be stored and accessible. But any time someone files a document, it can be filed in the wrong place. As files grow by leaps and bounds, problems proliferate.

Easy Retrieval with Media View

Filing hassles can be eliminated with electronic storage and retrieval. Imaged documents don't need labor-intensive attention, and they are more readily accessible than paper files, making retrieval of documents faster and more reliable.

CSC's outsourcing solutions are supplemented by CSC's imaging software, Media View and Automated Work Distributor. Media View is used by CSC's outsourcing clients to view images and multimedia files including audio and video recordings using an ordinary Web browser.

"Farmers Insurance uses CSC's Media View solution to access our scanned documents over the Web," said Don Fitzgibbon, Farmers' Personal Lines Support manager.

Media View makes accessing documents consistent throughout an entire organization. Media View allows the user to access documents through various searches. It also provides online monthly reports, allowing management to review all document activity.

Imaging For All Lines of Insurance

In addition to the project with Farmers and other P&C insurers, CSC also provides imaging work for the life insurance industry. For example, CSC's BPO service center in Jacksonville, Illinois, is shipping more than 250,000 records from Midland Life to the imaging center in Columbia.

After Swiss Re acquired Midland Life's book of business last year, the reinsurer tuned over administration of those contracts to CSC's Jacksonville office. Peggy Hutchinson, CSC's project manager for Midland Life, said the decision to scan the company's files came down to practicality.

"We have a substantial file room, but bringing in another 250,000 files wasn't practical," Hutchinson said.

Earlier this year, CSC's outsourcing operations expanded the use of Automated Work Distributor (AWD), an imaging solution with built-in work management capabilities. It needs no programmer intervention and has the best features of all of the imaging systems Hutchinson has seen.

"Imaging is a better long-term storage approach," Hutchinson said. "You start running out of space, and it makes no sense to have paper taking up miles and miles of shelf space when you can get it on compact electronic storage."

Related Information:

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Learn more about CSC's business process outsourcing services for financial services companies.

Learn more about CSC's imaging product, Media View.

Learn about CSC's workflow and document management product, Automated Work Distributor.