Paperless or Not...

[uphere]

Any thoughts on going paperless or semi-paperless...I'm a first year agent and manager. A small agency in a small town in the UP with lots of paper trails...just wondering if it would be worth the money. If anyone has any websites or contacts to research on this I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks.

[miinsguy]

There are a variety of systems. It depends on the functionality of your management for how you are going to approach it. The MAIA has a recommended vendor fo these type of services and the sales rep for them use to work for applied. I know an applied agency that has gone to bar coding and filing and they are very happy with their system.

We are a small agency < 200,000 income with two full time and 1 part time person.
My agency has gone 85% paperless. You have to keep some for health files and prospects otherwise we have gone paperless.

We use the Forms Boss Plus 2006 management system which lets us link the documents on the customer screen and we hit a button to view the .pdf document. I hired a college student to do the scanning this summer.

It is going quite well. You have to go to at least two monitors, some suggest three but I am scattered enough.

[pita3333]

Also paperless here. Niche agency 9 staff. We use ASM360 and a few scanners.

One key is to approach your markets and find out which can/will send you items (policies etc) via digital (email typically). You also have to factor in higher costs for the policies that you will have to print to deliver to your clients...untill you get them to accept digital.

Also suggest the dual monitors (one is your "paper" and the other your entry screen)...you will eventually find that you can copy and paste lots of items that you used to have to type!

[yoyowordup]

Paperless will be a must in the near future.

Are you on an agency management system? Applied Systems is about to introduce their 8.0 version which includes barcode scanning capability. They already have the ability to attach emails, photos and documents within the system.

The other document management systems that seem to be insurance oriented are Etfile/Apres systems, DocStar and PaperWise. We looked into those systems, but they ran about $20-30k over 5-7 years (including support fees). The system with Applied Systems is included (although not as robust as the standalone systems).

Good luck!!

[uphere]

We have applied systems (Doris) which is okay, however the customer service is lacking. If something goes down or we have any questions we very rarely if ever get a reply. We haven't been able to attach files or photos to Doris and it's frustrating when you have capabilities your paying for them and you can't use them or get a contact to call you back! Needed to vent a little. I appreciate the tips on the paperless topic, I'm in the research part right now.

[independent guy]

One key is to approach your markets and find out which can/will send you items (policies etc) via digital (email typically). You also have to factor in higher costs for the policies that you will have to print to deliver to your clients...untill you get them to accept digital.

Why would you need to print the actual policies? Couldn't you request the company still send those to you? And just have everything else sent paperless?

[pita3333]

Indie Guy...our carrier has never sent policies direct to clients (commercial lines here). From the carriers perspective..why would they want to sent paper and digital? Or..why send somethings paper and others digital...likewise, we cut at least 3-4 days off the process by getting everything digital.

We even get our faxes digital (GFI Faxmaker) so the only things we need to scan in are the orignals we get from clients in the mail. Lately we are noticing that our inbound mail is much lighter than it was a year ago...and that all we are really getting from the clients are the original signed apps and their checks. Working on accepting checks by fax and digital signatures so we dont even need the originals of them!


BTW: No such animal as paperless...or papergone...it is paper lite at best!

[uphere]

What about all the notes and memos that are handwritten by your agents/CSR's...do you scan those in or keep them in files...if you were to have to defend your actions wouldn't this stuff need to saved and archived...also does anyone scan the applications and shred originals or are the originals kept forever...basically, there will still be a need for paper files for some things am i correct about that....

[pita3333]

Uphere has hit a great point. EVERYONE must do activites in the system...there can be no paper notes that are not converted to digital...otherwise you are creating a problem should there ever be a claim.

As for originals that must be saved...another delima that must be addressed...confirm with your carriers that they will accept digital/scanned signature. I am finding that most do.

I bet that you will find that many of your carriers/wholesalers are working on going paperless if they are not already there.

Over 5 years ago I was the Marketing Manager for a medium sized agency...I told my carriers that all new biz submissions from us would be only in digital...a few protested....but jumped on board. Their typical reply would be that they needed to have central clearing. The solution was for them to set up a "newbiz" email address that went to the person(s) who did the manual clearning of accounts. Next thing I noticed....they sent out notices to all their agents that this was the way they were going to do business in the future...

[LCIS]

We use DORIS (applied) agency management system and a Document managment product called Docubase. It integrates directly into most agency managment vendors.
It is the best investment we have ever made, you can make this program do what ever you want and store ANY type of format. We have a VOIP phone system that records all calls. these .wav files can be added to the clients record in Docubase. So when they say they told you to make a change to a policy you can play back the phone call and prove them wrong or set yourself up for an E&O if you did not do what you were supposed to.
our faxes come in to a fax server and are dumped right in to the client record in Docubase.
The biggest job you will have after choosing the vendor is preparing your workflow for the scanning. THIS IS CRITICAL. set up your parameters for what you what scanned , the index fields you want and how many index fields you want. We use name, address, line of business, policy number, and doc type. this is all we determined we needed to be able to search for a document. You may require more or less. and whatever you do, if you decide to scan your current or back files, DO NOT let anyone scan them that does not have insurance experience, a high school kid does not know the difference in a dec page and a potato chip. It WILL get messed up if a knowledged person does not do it. Sorry we learned the hard way and anyone that has done it will agree.

We destroy documents 30 days after scanned and verified, agents should not need to keep any original documents these days and until the companies want to pay my rent for file cabinet space they will get scanned documents. another piece of advise, send ALL your companies and brokerage houses a letter that says you are going paperless as of a certain date and that they are welcome to the originals you have have been storing, but that they will be destroyed after a certain date. THEN DESTROY them after that date. do not keep them or you have wasted your time in going paperless. If you go to court and have paper and electronic files (in Florida) you can take only one set of files and the will usually prefer the paper (the courts).

Also do not scan into a program that will allow you to modify or delete a scanned document, this will not stand up in court most of the time.

http://www.docubase.net if you want to check it out.