Property and Casualty Insurer Improves Broker Service to Policyholders with Crawford Technologies

The Dominion is one of Canada’s largest property and casualty insurers. Outstanding claims service is standard, and ‘doing the right thing’ is the test the company judges itself against. The Dominion believes strongly in independent, professional advisors who provide advocacy and choice, which is why the company distributes its products exclusively through independent brokers.

According to Adisa Lazetic, Information Technology Architect at The Dominion, continued reliance on paper was becoming a burden for the company as well as its network of brokers. “All of our brokers receive a paper copy of each policyholder’s policy declaration documents for their reference,” explains Lazetic. “Updates can be sent throughout the year making filing a chore, especially for large brokerages. Brokers were looking to reduce costs and improve customer service by replacing their paper copies with electronic images that could be read online.”

Lazetic was responsible for defining a solution that would enable brokers to access an electronic version of their clients’ policy declaration documents. The responsibility also included an architectural analysis and selection of the final software. “Enabling brokers to view electronic versions of policy declaration documents meant that we needed to leverage the current print stream in order to capture an electronic image that mirrored the printed version,” says Lazetic. “The opportunity was to increase broker satisfaction and experience by providing the documents electronically while going green and saving on paper, printing, and mailing costs.”

The Dominion needed the ability to transform AFP print streams into PDF/A

Lazetic, with support from The Dominion chose Crawford Technologies (Booth 2839) for a solution to its online presentment requirements. “It was a rather in-depth selection process,” says Lazetic. “In the end we went with CrawfordTech and we are very pleased with our decision. Their PRO AFP to PDF/A solution has a smart design that is simple and easy use.”

According to Lazetic, the primary functional requirement was to efficiently transform their existing print streams into individual PDF/A files along with the associated index files for online presentment and archive. “Archiving was a large piece of the puzzle that was missing. And because of requirement for long-term archiving, the decision was made to transform the documents into the ISO standard PDF/A format. Crawford Technologies was a good fit with their solution to transform AFP into PDF/A.”

Results: Going paperless is a big win for brokers and the company

The launch of the online document repository for brokers was well received. Brokers are now able to find documents quickly and easily, which translates into better service for their clients. The Dominion’s operations team is seeing reduced expense in paper and production; saving trees and money. “Going paperless is a big win for the environment while increasing customer satisfaction and decreasing cost of operations,” says Lazetic.

Moving forward

The future looks bright for The Dominion and Crawford Technologies, with future plans to extend the solution to other lines of business and provide brokers with the ability to do bulk downloads of the documents.

“When we saw how easy and efficient it was to configure the solution, it was easy to decide to go with Crawford Technologies; the product is easy to use at a reasonable price,” says Lazetic. “Plus the experience working with CrawfordTech was extremely positive from initial demos, through training, into production. We are confident that we’ll be able to continue relying on their helpful and knowledgeable staff to assist us in expanding use of the tool.”