Zurich is aiming for 100% paperless processes to reduce printing & mailing costs and more

Zurich Switzerland’s agents follow a specific process to understand and evaluate their customer’s risk exposure. They begin by assessing basic information, then deep dive into life and non-life factors like property and liability, to pinpoint the risks and recommend the most appropriate solution(s).

For product recommendations, it was a standard practice to create a quote, finalize it on paper with notes, process it into an actual policy, which included changing hands multiple times, and then scan and archive it. Yet, quotes were only one piece of the puzzle. The problem was that approx. 2,000 supporting documents, client proposals, and pricing were stored in hard copies and printed PDF documents that then again – after being signed, needed to be digitized by the back office. It’s also company policy that the information recorded on the system must be exactly what was on the original paper document (including handwritten notes and changes).

This meant after the quote was signed, a lot of time was spent scanning, archiving, and redistributing the documents to customers and the back office by mail. This entire process should have been repeated for each risk exposure the client had.

Being a big corporate organization – having challenges with a somewhat fragmented IT landscape is nothing that Zurich was or is spared from. For example, they use a range of quoting tools, each with differing capabilities. Plus, all documents had to be finalized on paper. Zurich knew the way forward was to jump on the bandwagon of digitalization in the insurance industry. They set out to hunt for a workflow automation solution with eSign and media library capabilities that could be layered over such a challenging IT landscape to harmonize their front-end tools and processes at the point where their maturity ended.