Every working day, Turkish insurance company Sompo Sigorta receives a staggering 10,000 pages of correspondence. This includes claim forms, legal documents, hospital reports, estimates from repair companies and more.
Until recently, employees had to review and categorize all the documents by hand, then bring them to the appropriate departments for processing. It was a time-consuming, repetitive task that could result in document misplacement or other errors.
“There was a lot being done manually,” explains Zümra Yücesoy, Lead Process and Project Manager at Sompo Sigorta. “And we weren’t able to track how long it took to process the documents. We wanted to offer service level agreements to our partners and customers, but we would need a digital approach to be able to do that.”
After carefully evaluating products from several different vendors, Sompo Sigorta selected the IBM® Datacap, IBM Business Automation Workflow and IBM FileNet® Content Manager capabilities within the IBM Business Automation portfolio. Today, these products are also available as containerized software within the IBM Cloud Pak® for Business Automation platform.
Faster claim requests
Reduced the amount of time it takes to file a claim by 20% in the first 6 months
Tighter SLAs
Newly established SLA guarantees response to legal documents in 1 business day
Each IBM capability plays a distinct role in Sompo Sigorta’s new solution. First, when new documents arrive, the company uses IBM Datacap technology to capture the pertinent information and classify the documents. “In the past, we had to manually dispatch batches of documents to different departments three or four times a day,” explains Yücesoy. “Now, IBM Datacap classifies the documents as ‘a legal document’ or ‘a bodily injury document’ and we can immediately initiate the process without wasting time.”
Once the documents are delivered to the related departments, the business process management (BPM) capabilities of the IBM Business Automation Workflow technology come into play. Claims processing specialists use the IBM software to assess the information on the claim file and make necessary changes. “If they need to enter extra meta data, they just click on the item which is listed on BPM and enter the required data in the corresponding Datacap user interface. After that, all data is transferred to Filenet,” Yücesoy explains.
Finally, the IBM FileNet Content Manager capability automatically sends the documents to the accountable in-house application for processing. Since this information is shared among the systems, Sompo Sigorta can eliminate rework and ensure consistency across the enterprise.
The Sompo Sigorta project team has decided to implement this project one department at a time. The COVID-19 pandemic began just after the project’s first phase—implementing the software for the legal department—was completed. Fortunately, the team was able to complete the second phase—implementing the software for the claims department—remotely. The claims and legal departments worked from home during the pandemic period thanks to this project.
Six months after completing the implementation, Sompo Sigorta took stock of the solution’s impact. What it found was impressive. In the past, the organization struggled to measure how much time it took to process incoming documents. With the IBM solution, Sompo Sigorta can track each document as it moves through the organization. In fact, the solution helped reduce the amount of time the Sompo Sigorta operations department requires to file a claim by a full 20%.
The previous lack of insight into its document management process also meant Sompo Sigorta was unable to develop or adhere to service level agreements (SLAs). Today, that has changed significantly. “Now we have SLAs for different departments and different types of products,” says Yücesoy. “We set the ideal processing time for all legal and claims related document types, and it became an effective KPI to be able to measure the overall improvement in customer service.”
Although Turkey has not yet embraced cloud technology, the IBM solution ensures that Sompa Sigorta will be ready when that day comes. Yücesoy also foresees a day when the company uses AI to help streamline document processing even further. “We’d love to use IBM Watson to recognize things in images. For example, using photos to determine what part of a car was damaged in an accident. AI has lots of potential uses in the insurance industry,” she concludes.
Established in 2001, Sompo Sigorta (link resides outside of ibm.com) is among Turkey’s largest insurance companies. It offers non-life insurance products including health, travel, motor, household, and more. Sompo Sigorta, headquartered in Istanbul, held the seventh position in Turkish non-life Insurance Market with a market share of 5.3% in gross written premium in 2020.
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