Achieving Paperless PPI Claims Processing

Transcription

1 Achieving Paperless PPI Claims Processing BancTec creates a fully digital compaints process for UK Financial Services company With the recent announcements made by the FSA, many of the UK s largest lenders are attempting to process high volumes of PPI claims. BancTec is in a strong position to help these companies to facilitate complaints handling quickly, efficiently and cost effectively; while adhering to, and often exceeding, the requirements set out by the regulatory authorities. Steve Downey, General Manager, BancTec A specialist UK financial services company asked BancTec to partner with its complaints handling team in order to validate every PPI claim it received to ensure it met FSA guidelines. The result was a complete transformation of the Company s complaints handling operation turning it into a highly automated paperless environment. OVERVIEW Handling PPI claims in the UK has to be made in accordance with the Financial Services Authority (FSA). In order to meet these regulations every claim must be treated with full consideration of its individual circumstance and each assessment must be carried out promptly and efficiently. In addition, every claim received must be properly validated to ensure it is legitamate and complete. The Company outsourced these tasks to BancTec to ensure that all the proper systems and controls are in place and guarantee each claim is dealt with to strict service level agreements and validated to a zero defect tolerance.

2 ABOUT THE CLIENT The client Company is part of a major UK financial services organisation specialising in providing lending facilities to customers who did not have access to mainstream credit. By providing an opportunity to build or repair their credit histories, it offered many customers a route back into mainstream lending. The Company s client base made it one of the largest lenders for consumers with poor credit profiles. The Regulatory Landscape Along with its personal loans products, the Company also sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI). Following a series of actions instigated by the Consumers Association and the FSA, a judicial review was undertaken to investigate if PPI had been mis-sold. As a result, all providers of PPI are now required to undertake reviews of potential mis-selling. The FSA, as Financial Regulator for the UK, requires lenders to write to all customers where PPI has been sold, regardless of whether or not the customer has made a complaint, in order to make them aware that they could be able to claim compensation. Many of the Company s customers had taken out PPI. Some have already claimed and been compensated. The remainder, if they make a valid claim, will receive up to 90% of any financial loss they may have suffered. To ensure these claims are handled as efficiently as possible, the Company s existing claims handling resources are being used along with the validation process set up by BancTec. All decisions on claims will be made in accordance with FSA requirements which will closely oversee and regulate all steps. Best practice must always be observed particularly in the areas of maintaining awareness of customer specific circumstances; keeping customers informed, showing positive behaviour towards the customer and ensuring the proper controls are in place for a fair and independent review of each individual claim. For the Company to achieve best practice it would require complete accountability of its mailroom operations in order to evidence its activities at every step. So the Company asked BancTec to manage the claims receipt and validations process to obtain the efficiency levels which otherwise would have taken considerable investment in staff and specialist imaging systems. Key processing stats: > Capacity for processing up to 380,000 claims > 150,000 pages scanned monthly > Full identity checks on 100% of claims > Hosted archive capable of storing over one million documents T: +44 (0) E: MARKETING@BANCTEC.CO.UK

3 The Pocess In-depth The rules guiding claim evaluations are continuously improved upon. These process refinements follow regular operational reviews to deliver best practice. For the process to run efficiently, it requires knowledgeable and experienced administrators to adjust quickly to the changes without impeding service levels. It is critical that the system is flexible enough to accommodate process improvements while ensuring each claim is validated, or responded to, the same day it arrives at the BancTec processing centre. To provide the highest quality valuations and the fastest response times, the BancTec system employs specifically designed user screens to streamline the validation tasks for the administrators. BancTec s advanced keyfrom-image and workflow solution presents each page of the form on-screen and guides the administrator through each response. Only when it passes each stage successfully is the claim moved onto the next stage of evaluation. Each claim is reviewed twice by separate administrators and then sent to a quality control officer for final validation. BancTec must correctly validate every legitimate claim with a zero error tolerance. It is important that no back-log develops. Each claimant case is held on BancTec s secure hosted digital archive to manage all claim related documents. The archive holds each case under three different levels of status; open, waiting for amendment and approved for decisioning. Claim forms are often returned to the customer for amendment. It is important these returns are made to the customer promptly and with the necessary guidance for the client to respond correctly. This reduces the number of times any claim has to be re-submitted and minimises the time these claims are held as waiting. BancTec must keep claimants informed about the progress of a claim by providing an explanation in writing as to why any claim is rejected and how to make a successful re-submission. BancTec must operate to strict service level agreements, have the proper systems in place and properly manage any risk in handling the claims approval process. As an outsource provider involved in the claims process, BancTec will be subject to close examination and is required to adhere to the requirements of the FSA. CREATING A PAPERLESS CLAIMS HANDLING PROCESS Approximately 400,000 claim forms will be sent out during the project, each one accompanied by a claims pack providing guidance to the customer on their entitlement to a claim and instructions on completing the form. Each form must be completed correctly to strict FSA requirements in order for it to be accepted as a valid claim. BancTec worked alongside the Company to design all the outgoing documents, letters and envelopes. Every PPI claim form is delivered directly to the BancTec processing facility in Harlow, Essex for review. The claim forms, which are eleven pages in length, each have a unique barcode to authenticate the originality of the form and to pre-populate information about the individual claimant. Other documents that are received or returned along with the initial claim forms include; undelivered mail, re-submissions, customer correspondence and valuable ID documents such as drivers licences and passports. In total over 17,000 PPI mail items are handled at the BancTec processing centre every day. When it arrives at the BancTec processing facility the mail is sorted by document type and scanned through BancTec s IntelliScan high speed document capture system which stamps each form to generate an audit trail. The resulting digital images feeds the document workflow application, configured specifically for the Company, which passes each work item through a number of validation tasks actioned by a core team of administrators. Rules in the BancTec system determine whether a claim is acceptable and depending on the analysis will route the valid claims and correspondence for daily upload to the Company s administration system. If a claim is invalid for any reason it is either sent to a telephony queue for the Company to action, or to a mail-out queue where the BancTec team prints and despatches personalised letters to the claimant to explain the issues with the claim, or to return any proof documents that have been submitted.

4 THE outsourced PROCESS: > Process flexible - driven by customer mail, the initial unit of work is an envelope, but the contents can be unpredictable. > Time critical - intraday SLAs are in place with all document streams relating to the claims process. > Ring-fenced - every process is delivered from its own work area, on its own business application, has a nominated team leader and a dedicated team of trained staff. > Invested infrastructure - the Company has access to advanced high speed imaging systems and fully configurable securely hosted business solutions, developed and supported by BancTec. > Compliant & Auditable - a process wide audit trail and daily performance indicators ensures full compliance to regulatory requirements. Some of the physical documents are destroyed securely on site while other documents are returned periodically to the regulatory bodies at their request. The entire process is governed by a zero-defect Service Level Agreement. This requires a wealth of management information which is automatically produced by the workflow system for review every day. The BancTec service releases all validated claims in electronic format to the Company s decisioning team via structured work queues. This allows the Company to operate in a totally paperless environment so the focus can remain on assessing claims & calculating payments. Exceptions are often the Rule Exceptions can add serious delays and costs to any process. With the Company selling PPI for a number of years, many respondents have since moved, changed their name or marital status. To comply to FSA regulations these changes must be recorded on the claim form and be accompanied by proof of change documents such as utility bills, in the case of an address change, or passport or driving license, in the case of a change in name or marital status. These documents must be carefully authenticated by trained staff, using on-line address or ID validation systems, and then returned safely to the customer. Their bank account details are also validated to combat fraud and inaccuracy. The system also has to cope with hundreds of gone-aways every day. Both the returned envelope together with the claim form are scanned and the information interpreted in order that the new address can be investigated. In addition, sometimes pages can be missing or enter the system in the wrong order. At any stage of the process an administrator can request a re-scan where the physical claim form is pulled from the archive (using the printed audit trail number) and re-scanned or returned to the claimant to request completion of the missing pages. T: +44 (0) E: MARKETING@BANCTEC.CO.UK

5 BancTec receives, captures and validates the Company s claim forms, correspondence and any undelivered mail. Where necessary we obtain identity and residence evidence from potential claimants and authenticate bank accounts, ID documents and addresses. When we are satisfied that we have a complete and accurate claim, it is transmitted electronically to the Company for decisioning. Peter Jolliffe, BPO Operations Director, BancTec Outsourcing for Improved Performance Flexible, Cost Effective and Regulatory Compliant Solutions BancTec has transformed the Company s claims handling operation into a totally paperless environment. Built around best practice methods, the service ensures the Company s customers are treated promptly and fairly and allows the Company to efficiently perform its payment calculations to FSA regulations. The claims process requires a highly efficient method of assessment which the Company has achieved by accessing BancTec s advanced document management services. For the Company the benefits are clear; BancTec s expertise transforms the mail handling, data gathering, case management, claims validation and exceptions tasks into a streamlined, automated process that is far better able to provide evidence than any in-house operation. The infrastructure used at the BancTec facility offers the highest levels of data security to protect the Company from any risk posed to its business. Disaster recovery scenarios have been set up to ensure that, if the worst does happen, the process can be quickly moved to where a mirrored infrastructure is in place. As well as being 100% committed to the duration of the project, BancTec s obligation to the Company s claims process can be measured by the zero defect targetrelated contract. Strict Service Level Agreement terms requires BancTec to monitor every activity. The workflow systems generate daily statistics to ensure each deadline and processing target is met, and normally surpassed. BancTec was also selected because its BPO operations provided the Company with a dedicated, ring-fenced claims handling team, pooling an additional mix of full and part time experienced staff as required. BancTec ensures all staff are vetted, assessed and have the required levels of experience in reviewing PPI claims. Add to that BancTec s core expertise of handling complex, high volume document processes, the result is the highest quality services with a significant reduction in operating costs and risk for the Company. BancTec s outsourcing services delivers each valid PPI claim electronically to the Company s decisioning systems allowing it to focus on the primary activity of calculating payments. The alternative of hiring large numbers of additional staff to manage the high volumes of paper, and to provide the necessary conforming evidence for the regulatory authorities, is cost prohibitive and would not guarantee the same level of results. The Company s process is a continuously improving one with initiatives constantly being implemented to further improve the time, accuracy and quality of response. BancTec arrange regular exchange visits for the operational teams. It has also embarked on a survey of the Company s operations to find new ways in which the claims process can be further streamlined and reduce the burden for its operational staff and decisioning teams.

6 BANCTEC PROVIDES KEY BPO SERVICES: > Processing applications and claims, payment records, cheques and invoices > Processing legal agreements and statutory customer information > Processing customer correspondence and unsolicited third party communications > Long term hosting and case management of electronic records of all documents and activities > Hosting of workflow environments to enable client embedded tasks > Validating and returning customer original documents T: +44 (0) E: 2011 BancTec, Inc. All rights reserved. BancTec is a registered trademark of BancTec, Inc. Specifications are subject to change without notice.