Sasria, as Africa’s foremost special risks insurer, covers property worth billions of Rands against extraordinary risk. These risks include damages arising from riots, strikes, and terrorism. Sasria distributes its cover through agent companies (insurance companies). Should a customer require Sasria cover, the insurance company will attach a Sasria Coupon to its underlying policy.

In order to assist the distribution channel with the day-to-day administration of the Sasria business as well as assisting Sasria with managing its distribution channel, Intervate, a T-Systems company, developed a Customer Web Portal (CWP) to automate the basic underwriting administration and the claims handling process. This in turn improved the efficiency in claims and underwriting administration, which leads to improved customer satisfaction.

When Sasria needed to migrate their environment to SharePoint 2013, the insurer once again turned to Intervate. The updated CWP includes several updates and enhancements, as well as additional automated processes that help to reduce risk and minimise administrative tasks.

With the help of Intervate, Sasria has enhanced the CWP with a rates calculator built onto the coupon issuing module and an automated Annexure 1 return computation and submission functionality. "The rates calculator will minimise Sasria's risk relating to premium calculation; while the automated Annexure 1 return will reduce the administrative burden on the monthly premium compilation", says Ivan Scodeggio, IT Manager at Sasria. The enhancements also include various automated features that will replace the previously manual processes.

“Agent companies making use of the CWP will be able to automatically calculate premiums in line with Sasria’s regulations based on the sum insured when creating Sasria policies, which provides them with e-coupons relating to these policies. With the enhanced CWP, e-coupons cannot be created without using the rates calculator, which ensures that the premiums we receive are correct. On a monthly basis, agent companies send Sasria a bordereaux, which is automatically created using e-coupon information. The aim of this enhancement is to reduce administrative burden and assist Sasria in reducing its risk relating to accurate premium collections,” says Ivan Scodeggio, IT Manager at Sasria.

“The previous calculator was an Excel-based spreadsheet that agent companies would download from the Sasria website. This carried the risk of agent companies using an outdated previously downloaded version of the calculator. The new rates calculator is an online system that not only calculates the premiums accurately, but also introduces a fast approval workflow that allows agents to review summary information prior to actually generating the premiums. Automated bordereaux submission ensures completeness and accuracy of premium information and benefits Sasria with agent company audits,” adds Steven Magid, SharePoint Team Lead at Intervate.

In addition to improving the accuracy of rates calculations and the completeness of reporting, thereby reducing risk and improving efficiency, CWP 2013 features a claims dashboard. This is an addition to the claims search function. It also introduces the ability to create a claims watch list. Agent companies are now able to track and view the status of their customers’ claims and mark certain claims to update on the dashboard if there is any change to the claims status. Furthermore the new system leverages the improved SharePoint workflow capabilities of SharePoint 2013, which makes it easier for agent companies to request the backdating of e-coupons without having to contact Sasria directly.

In addition, to the deployment of new features and functionality, there are a number of technical benefits enabled by the move from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2013. One major benefit is improved support for the creation of customisations to enhance the basic portal capabilities used to create the CWP. These improvements decreased the time required to develop and roll out new enhancements. Furthermore, improved integration capabilities and enhanced Business Connectivity Services opened new possibilities for integration between the CWP which allowed for smoother integration into the existing claims system. With improved Web Analytics, SharePoint 2013 enables Sasria to better understand usage patterns, in turn assisting in identifying areas for improvement. SharePoint 2013 also improved usability for agents through a number of user-friendly updates.

With the updated CWP, Sasria not only benefits from ensuring correct premium calculations, they can also offer improved customer service as a result of enhanced ability to deliver automated business processes. Sasria is also able to leverage cost savings by reducing the number of printed coupon packs, as this process is now completed electronically.

“The upgrade from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2013 has helped Sasria pursue two core values of customer centricity and innovation by aiding with the transformation of their CWP from a system that stored header level coupon data into a transactional system that really makes it easier for agent companies to capture insured business with Sasria,” Magid concludes.