How a $375 million credit union uses Laserfiche to automate the input of documents, including loan applications, new member cards, internal documents and loan documents.
Joman Kwong, strategic solutions manager, financial services, at Laserfiche on the tools that are enabling credit unions to reap the benefits of digital transformation without incurring cost or resource overruns.
Joman Kwong, strategic solutions manager, financial services at Laserfiche, on why IT leaders at credit unions must build a secure information-governance backbone.
By Joman Kwong, Laserfiche strategic solutions manager for financial services
Enhancing the customer experience and optimizing value chain operations are the primary driving forces behind the majority of insurance companies’ digital transformation initiatives in the next two years, as revealed by a recent survey conducted by Arizent Research and Digital Insurance in partnership with Laserfiche.
In May 2023, Arizent Research and Digital Insurance, on behalf of Laserfiche, surveyed 103 insurance leaders working in business process, back-office operations or IT at major insurance carriers.
“In the next two years, the top business priority driving digital transformation is creating a digital-first customer experience and improving customer satisfaction,” said Joman Kwong, strategic solutions manager for financial services at Laserfiche.
“This involves automating processes, such as self-service requests for policy quotes and claims processing, as well as automating frequent communications about the status of claims. These actions can reduce the paperwork burden for customers, enhance transparency, and enable better customer engagement.”
Seventy-seven percent of insurers report that the majority or all of their digital transformation initiatives are centered around enhancing the customer experience (see Figure 1). In fact, six out of ten insurers indicate that their digital transformation efforts have progressed beyond the stage of digitizing and organizing information, focusing instead on automating and streamlining processes. The positive impact of these automation efforts on the customer experience has not gone unnoticed. Organizations that have increased the efficiency of their operational workflows are more inclined to label their digital transformation initiatives as customer-centric.
More than half of insurers are currently exploring automated processes and seeking enhanced operational efficiency. However, despite these efforts, only a small fraction have fully achieved their automation goals. A mere 18% of insurers report that their operational workflows are fully automated and highly efficient. Even more concerning, 20% acknowledge that their operational workflows currently suffer from some degree of inefficiency.
One possible explanation for this lack of progress may be attributed to the absence of data centralization and effective system integrations, a challenge that becomes even more pronounced as organizations expand. Among respondents from organizations with 10,000 or more employees, 39% admit to grappling with information silos and disconnected applications.
The need for automation in various facets of the business continues to grow. Notably, a lack of automation in internal processes could leave the vast majority of insurers (87%) who plan to implement remote or hybrid work models over the next two years unprepared. Without fully automated and efficient workflows, the risk of data loss, human errors, and disruptions in business continuity remains significant in geographically dispersed workplaces. Moreover, without real-time access to data, employees face limitations in their ability to support customers.
The findings reveal a shift in priorities, as insurers are reevaluating the driving forces behind digital transformation in the insurance industry. To accomplish these objectives, it is essential to have a centralized information backbone, streamline data entry and processing across the organization, and ensure seamless data integration across various applications to support any automation initiatives.
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SITUATION
• Needed more consistency in workflows across geographically dispersed offices
• Addressing compliance requirements involved many manual, time-intensive steps
RESULTS
• Streamlined the new account opening process
• Opened 600 new accounts and brought in $400 million in new assets in 2023
• Modernized records management and workflows reduced the burden of compliance and audits on associates
Rehmann’s wealth management practice must coordinate a lot of moving parts across its offices in Michigan, Ohio and Florida. In addition to advisory services, the firm operates as a broker-dealer, a role which greatly expands its compliance obligations. Coordinating workflows across those services to ensure advisors across branches follow rules around conflicts of interest and suitability is only half the battle. Having documentation readily available to prove compliance adds another layer of complexity.
In Laserfiche Forms, the firm has found a flexible tool capable of streamlining data collection and reporting, as well as shaping the design of workflows in ways that make them less prone to human error and easier to audit. “Our biggest challenge with Laserfiche Forms tends to be keeping up with demand for new ones,” said Amy Flourry, Rehmann Wealth director of operations.
The ability to connect information across different parts of the client life cycle has enormous potential to improve processes throughout the business. Digital onboarding became an area of intense focus during the pandemic, when the ability to meet clients face to face became limited. For Marla Masters, strategic business analyst for the Wealth Management team, digitization was just the first step in a journey toward a more streamlined process.
Integrating customer relationship management (CRM) software with other back-end tools has long been the elephant in the room for making onboarding more efficient. The ability to move information from Rehmann’s CRM to its Laserfiche repository was a deciding factor in its recent transition to Salesforce.
“With the old system, our associates had to enter the same information multiple times to get it from the CRM and into Laserfiche,” Masters recalled. “Now, we’re able to use the same data, so when our associates enter information about a lead or a prospect, it’s still available as they transition to a client.”
The ability to automatically populate onboarding forms makes the process faster and easier for associates and clients alike. That streamlining means the firm can make the best impression possible on new clients right away, while giving support staff more time to put toward higher-value tasks. The firm can also use the information it collects to automatically file compliance documents, such as those identifying the beneficial owners of entity clients, yielding further back-office efficiency gains. With these integrations in place, Rehmann opened 600 new accounts and brought in $400 million in new assets in 2023 alone.
In addition to new account opening and onboarding, Rehmann has automated several other processes across the organization, including:
Compliance is a major concern for broker-dealers. Conducting audits used to be a resource-intensive process that involved harmonizing physical files in multiple locations. If the firm identified a compliance concern, it would then have to go back and fix things after the fact, which could be a complicated process.
Now, using Laserfiche Forms, Rehmann can put guardrails around processes that help the firm identify and fix problems while processes are still ongoing. As a result, many issues can be corrected on the fly, as opposed to having to go back and redo a process from scratch.
The firm has also leaned on the expertise of the consultants at CDI, a Laserfiche solution provider that offers training and technical resources to help implement large-scale system changes like the Salesforce transition. This ensures that organizations have the best available tools for their current needs. As a result, Rehmann’s success in building more efficient processes continues to build momentum. The low-code tools and solution templates available for Laserfiche Forms have made it possible for Masters to continue to refine the firm’s tools and processes further to make them more dynamic and user friendly. These solutions have reduced implementation time for new, automated processes from six months to approximately 30 days, freeing up IT resources to focus on strategy, rather than implementation.
In one recent example, Masters reconfigured the firm’s Excel-based trade ticket process to work via Laserfiche Forms. Rather than having to send emails to the right people and collaborate on a spreadsheet, associates can manage trade requests through a form-based system that requests information dynamically, driving an automatic escalation process to ensure trades are compliant and routing forms to the appropriate people for confirmation. At the end, trade tickets are saved automatically to client files.
“Our work technology must keep up with the apps we use every day on our phones. The way we interact with technology in all aspects of our lives has changed, so it’s critical for our office environment to keep up,” said Flourry. “Laserfiche makes it easy to design processes that our people really want to use.”
The insurance industry has embraced digital technology in pursuit of gaining a competitive edge. Despite ongoing economic uncertainties and various significant challenges, insurers and their distribution channels are currently grappling with disruptions. These disruptions encompass a rise in claims and incurred costs, as well as a surge in operational expenses. Given these evolving circumstances, insurance leaders must remain adaptive and flexible with a steadfast commitment to digital transformation.
Join us for a panel of industry experts who will unveil the latest Digital Insurance survey findings. These insightful discoveries shed light on how technology and operational leaders at insurance carriers are strategically redefining the priorities of digital transformation and shaping the new normal.
Topics covered in this webinar include:
Opening a new account has traditionally been a cumbersome process within the financial services sector, burdened by paperwork and time-consuming steps. Firms have sought to improve this process by either building their own workflows with existing technology tools or deploying new point solutions. However, these approaches often lack the true automation needed, as they involve manual and repetitive procedures and are disconnected among line-of-business systems.
Join this complimentary webinar to discover an end-to-end integrated solution for new account opening using Laserfiche process automation, coupled with integration tools that enhance the client experience, reduce operational costs, and address compliance challenges.
The webinar will cover the following topics:
WEBINAR
The SEC and FINRA continue to levy steep fines on wealth management firms for failing to comply with book-
keeping and records retention rules, such as storing and tracking records with an audit trail system or in a Write-
Once-Read-Many (WORM) format, including meta-data and other compliance requirements. Advisors are held to
maintain particularly high standards of liability in respect of precise records management, not to mention the
proliferation of hybrid workplaces and the usage of non-compliant platforms for client communication – making
the need to advanced document management technology critical. The bad news is that many advisory firms are
taking shortcuts and using non-compliant file sharing tools that open them up to regulatory exposure, fines and
cyber-security breaches and reputational risk.
Join this complimentary webinar to learn the latest from a compliance and product expert-led discussion regarding best practices and key considerations for seeking out proven solutions.
You will learn:
Read the full case study to learn more about how Laserfiche has been instrumental in the growth of D.L. Evans Bank and has become one of the most important applications in the bank’s operations: https://www.laserfiche.com/resources/customer-stories/d-l-evans-automates-compliance-and-records-management/
Explore additional insightful resources from the Laserfiche banking solutions page: https://www.laserfiche.com/solutions/financial-services/banks-and-credit-unions/
Joman Kwong, strategic solutions manager: financial services, on how credit unions can build a secure information-governance backbone.
