Creditron Case Study:

Cumberland Insurance Group Slashes Payments Processing Time, Sharpening its Competitive Edge

Founded in 1844, Bridgeton, NJ-based Cumberland Insurance Group offers a variety of personal and commercial insurance plans throughout Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  Proudly maintaining an A+ (Superior) Rating from the A.M. Best Company, Cumberland Insurance Group attributes its long track record of success in the competitive insurance arena to its outstanding customer service and financial stability.  Today, it is building on this reputation, thanks in part to an automated payments system from Creditron. 

A focus on improving operations efficiency

Cumberland Insurance Group has elected to differentiate itself in the very intense insurance industry by stressing customer service and operations efficiency.  In particular, one of the company’s objectives is to go paperless.  A great deal of information is required to service insurance customers and Cumberland Insurance Group’s efficiency and effectiveness in processing, storing and retrieving this data – including premium payments – helps distinguish the company.  By implementing an image-based payments processing system, the company figured its billing department could begin migrating toward a paperless environment, while achieving significant benefits, in terms of operational efficiency and customer service.

Pamela Burton, assistant vice president of the audit and billing departments for Cumberland Insurance Group, explained, “Prior to Creditron, all payments processing was manually done in our receivables system.  The checks were endorsed the next day using a machine that broke with frustrating regularity and required constant supervision to ensure that each check was, in fact, endorsed.  Once the checks were endorsed, we totaled the individual batches of each input operator – we employed six operators at that time – to derive the daily deposit.”

“We wanted to create competitive advantage by streamlining the process and reducing the timeframe dramatically,” Burton stated.  In 2005, Cumberland Insurance Group began evaluating automated payments processing solutions.  First, it looked at equipment that simply imaged and endorsed checks.  But the company quickly recognized that companies such as Creditron offered additional features, such as automated check allocation, that delivered significantly greater benefits.  After evaluating five or six different vendors, Cumberland Insurance Group selected the RP$ 2000 payments processing system from Creditron.  Cumberland Insurance Group’s solution runs on the NCR iTRAN 180e document scanner and includes modules for image research, courtesy and legal amount recognition (CAR/LAR), hot files, page scanning, and accounts receivable check (ARC) conversion.

The insurer processes approximately 1,200 premium payments per day, and expects to add to that volume soon by installing additional RP$ modules for mortgage and list-type payments.

Partnering for Success

Burton recalled, “To successfully effect change, we knew we needed a very reliable, flexible, and cost-effective platform to support our mission-critical billing operations.”  Cumberland Insurance Group chose Creditron because its solution didn’t require a large amount of IT involvement, which was essential, as the insurer was in the midst of a computer conversion.

Sean Weir, production analyst of the audit and billing departments at Cumberland Insurance Group, added, “Our confidence in the software grew substantially after personally witnessing its ease of use and functionality at a Creditron customer site in Dover, DE.  Creditron’s sales representative, Bill Genard, was very helpful in organizing the site visit and explaining the system in detail, helping our decision-makers become more comfortable with the choice.  We also believed, rightly so, that Creditron’s solution would allow us to downsize our staff through attrition, while automating the handling of an increasing volume of checks.”

“The speed of the Creditron system in inputting checks speaks for itself,” Burton recalled.  “The ability of the CAR/LAR option to ‘read’ check information really appealed to us.  And we liked the system’s ability to endorse checks automatically, as well as the ease of retrieving images and researching cross-referenced information when a customer service issue arises.”

The cutover to the Creditron system from a manual processing environment went very smoothly.  Burton commented, “The ease of installation was impressive.  The technician was very competent and worked closely with our staff to determine our needs and to customize the system accordingly.  Most operators quickly and easily adapted to the Creditron system.”

More than Meeting Business Needs

The new image-based environment has met Cumberland Insurance Group’s goals for improving payments processing turnaround.  On average, the Creditron system handles 62 percent of the payments inputs automatically, leaving only the “problem” checks to be dealt with manually; future enhancements could improve this level of automation to 85 percent.  The system has similarly streamlined check endorsing, reducing a labor-intensive process that used to consume an hour a day into a simple task that takes just a few minutes.  And with electronic storage and retrieval of checks and payment stubs, Cumberland Insurance Group staff can access data in a few minutes – providing fast service to internal and external constituents.  Before Creditron, researching past payments took 10 to 20 minutes, and only the stubs could be viewed.  Moreover, paper storage required piles of stubs be manually filed.  

Cumberland Insurance Group’s ability to make processing changes also has improved.  Weir explained, “At one point, we needed the date printed on the back of all checks for a certain application.  After a call to Creditron, the date was added within two days.  Similarly, we placed a call to have the endorsement line moved higher on the back of the checks.  Two days later, the line was shifted higher.  Creditron support has met our needs, and the levels of attention that we have received after the implementation have been second to none.”

Burton concluded, “We’ve been able to realize significant savings by automating payments processing.  The billing department reorganized its workflow and job responsibilities after deploying Creditron, and now only four employees are required for payments processing.  The savings from the Creditron system is felt every day through the endorsement of checks and the ease of researching questions.  We expect payback on the system in 37 months.”

“Of all of the new purchases that have been made specifically for the billing department, Creditron is the only one that actually does what it said it would do,” Burton commented.

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