The computers sort the incoming documents at Länsförsäkringar

The ReadSoft effect on: Länsförsäkringar
Process: Customer driven processes
Segment: Insurance
Country: Sweden

Insurance companies handle astronomical amounts of documents. Every day, thousands of letters, forms, registrations, orders etc. must be registered and taken care of. Handling documents efficiently is thus a crucial task for insurance companies in order to provide customers with swift and accurate replies. Swedish insurance company Länsförsäkringar seems to have nailed this down as they have Sweden’s most satisfied customers within banking and insurance. One reason for this is the use of ReadSoft’s technology for automated document handling.

Now, Länsförsäkringar takes another technological leap forward as they invest in ReadSoft’s software CLASSIFY and INDEX. With this new technology, the computers will take care of document sorting and classification.

Faster answers = customer satisfaction

Länsförsäkringar’s department for document processing receives about 2.8 million documents each year. These include applications, order forms, letters, damage claims etc. Länsförsäkringar has used ReadSoft’s software for forms and invoice processing for several years, but arrival registration, sorting and classification have been a manual task. Until now.

By automating arrival registration and sorting, Länsförsäkringar are able to shorten their processing time for a damage claim by five days.

How it works

By scanning incoming documents, a digital image is created. From this image, ReadSoft’s software can read information. The software CLASSIFY, looks through the document for information or layout which is unique for a specific type of document. This information makes the software able to determine whether it is an order form, a damage claim or a letter etc. The documents are automatically sorted, classified by category and presented to the person in charge of the matter immediately after arrival.

Right now, the software sorts documents into 75 different categories defined by Länsförsäkringar,

The INDEX-part of the software extracts key information from the document such as name, insurance number, organization number, date, social security number etc. This makes the documents searchable in Länsförsäkringar’s document management system.

Increased capacity by 20-30%

Even though the system automates a lot of tasks, Länsförsäkringar sees no need to dismiss staff. Instead, they look forward to handling a lot more documents without employing more people.

The team working with CLASSIFY and INDEX at the department for document processing are very impressed by how well the system works.

"We start by processing about 2 million documents annually, but we will probably be able to increase the number of documents we handle by 20-30%," says Ingvar Karlstrand at Länsförsäkringar’s department for document processing.

Increased quality

Faster and cheaper document handling is of course a major benefit, but according to Ingvar Karlstrand, quality improvements are just as important.

"Since computers are handling the classification of incoming documents, we get a much better continuity when it comes to classification. When this task is handled manually, it always differs a bit from person to person. Better consistency in document classification has been very important for us," finishes Ingvar Karlstrand.