ABN AMRO Insurance (AAV) is the insurance branch of ABN AMRO Bank and forms part of the Delta Lloyd Group in a joint venture with ABN AMRO Bank. The bank is the primary distribution channel for AAV. As an addition to the personal advice provided by the bank, AVV uses the internet as a new distribution channel. In the near future, clients will be able to communicate directly with the company‘s systems, and administrative actions will be handled directly and without the need of human intervention (Straight Through Processing, or STP). This will be consistent with the expectations of the modern client (self-service) and will also improve the efficiency of AVV‘s business process. Within AAV, the “STP” program has been launched to realize these objectives.
An initial inventory in the program showed among other things that the front-office and back-office must be better aligned and that a flexible and versatile solution is needed to enable AAV to respond to the current market dynamic. Quality controls, including those for the topicality, correctness and completeness of the supplied information, must be executed as far as possible in the front-office. In addition, knowledge rules must be made more explicit and automated and must be available to the entire primary process. Be Informed was asked to implement an application that realizes the objectives of the STP program in two domains: Life and General. This specifically involves processing policy changes and processing claims.
Be Informed‘s model-driven standard platform is a flexible and configurable solution that on the one hand achieves an efficient process structure and on the other hand provides flexibility for the often complex cases that are handled during the process. Separation of the rules (including product rules, policy rules and process rules) from the process flow results in a drastic simplification of processes, while complexity related to products, services, legislation and regulations is kept manageable. Every change or claim is handled by a unique and fully automated dynamically compiled process. The result is that there are no more exceptions in the process implementation, and every case is handled specifically. The Be Informed approach results in simple and generic processes that are very efficient in terms of STP. This means that STP is the standard, and that a manual activity will only be initiated in situations in which full automated handling is not possible − for example, because the requisite information is incomplete, the rules are ambiguous or manual handling is required from the viewpoint of risk management. Unlike traditional implementations, the manual process step is supported by Be Informed (decision support) and the automated process is resumed after the manual intervention.
The benefits for AAV are obvious. In the first place, the service provided to the clients is faster and they can also clearly see how the administrative process is progressing. The latter is resulting in a considerable reduction in the number of client contacts in the call centre. In addition, major savings on internal administrative activities are being realized because a large proportion of the transactions and claims can be handled automatically. Good input checks mean that unnecessary internal investigations can be avoided and checks by senior employees are only necessary in the event of complex changes or claims.