Insurance claims processing is a skein-like business: At Kingsway General Insurance Co. in Toronto there are not only a variety of insurance policies and plans – for auto, transportation, health and property & casualty to name a few – but there is also a heightened view of customer service that has spurred Kingsway to handle its customers’ business the way customers want, which can be legion.

Kingsway needed to more easily identify the relationships between its customers, as well as to ensure they received timely service tailored to the way they expect to do business. To do this manually is virtually impossible, but the insurance company’s past solution wasn’t working optimally either.

“We had an operating system that tracked a minimal amount of data, and it wasn’t customer centric but policy centric,” said Linda Paccanaro, Kingsway’s vice president of claims administration. “We knew the policy number, but not how it may be connected to other claims, not without having to either pull up other screens or manually search through paper files.”

CRM for the Way Kingsway Works

Kingsway found its solution in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which enabled the insurance company to save on manpower while also quickly opening opportunities for insight into claims that helped Kingsway’s adjustors ask the right questions during investigations. In the process, the insurance company moved from an Oracle database to a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for data management.

Teaming with Salentica Systems, Microsoft Dynamics CRM provided Kingsway with an intuitive solution for claims administration, from easy data input to viewing ability of what Kingsway’s standing is with a customer at any given time. “We can now track customers and link that tracking to a variety of other information, like how they want their business handled, when the claim was made, and whether there were witnesses to the claim,” said Paccanaro. “We’ve had a positive experience with the product.”

Microsoft Dynamics CRM was designed to run within Microsoft Outlook. “By integrating seamlessly into their business and working under their rules, small and large companies alike find their businesses can be dramatically improved with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Kingsway has seen this first hand,” said Microsoft’s CRM product manager Frank Falcone.

This has been Kingsway’s experience, according to Paccanaro. “CRM has been conducive to our claims functionality; the service module is designed similarly to how we do claims. Its similarity to Outlook helped us bridge on training and saved us training time,” she said. “It rolled out very smoothly.”

Kingsway has over 200 seats using Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Salentica’s iParties, which help claims administrators and researchers cross-reference and flag various relationships between claims and customers. Paccanaro said the new approach helps the company to more easily identify “hot spots” as well. As an example, she said, multiple claims of a suspicious nature now are easily flagged. “We can identify a service provider and search for all incidences it has been involved in.”

In-Depth Knowledge Quickly

Kingsway can now also track claims by location and litigation. If, for example, there are cargo losses that occur more than once in the same area, or multiple lawsuits involving the same party, the insurance company can pick that up quickly and warn the client. This level of analysis, quickly found, gives adjustors clearer insight into a claim.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has three components: salesforce automation, marketing automation and a customer service module. Microsoft’s Falcone said it captures emails, transactions, enables viewing of inbound and outbound client documents, and generates reports. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is offered in small business and professional packages – with version 3.0 just released in December 2006. Falcone notes that there is no difference between the two packages in terms of features and functionality, only in the number of seats.

Meanwhile, Kingsway – now doing more with less – is on the grow. Before implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Salentica’s iParties, there were some 100 Kingsway claims administrators. Less than two years later, that number is approaching 250. “We process claims from across Canada and into the United States,” said Paccanaro. “We cover a wide territory as well as a broad line of products.”

www.kingsway-general.com
www.salentica.com