A risk management case study detailing how America’s largest independent Third Party Administrator (TPA) uses SmartCompliance cloud software for streamlining certificate of insurance management.
Cannon Cochran Management Services, known as CCMSI, was started in 1978 and is now the largest independent third party administrator (TPA) in the United States. 1,000 employees work from 41 different offices to provide self-insured property and casualty claims management – including workers’ compensation, liability and property coverage. To maintain a client retention rate of 98%, CCMSI has to rely on intelligent information systems that save time, cut costs and ensure complete data availability and security.
To meet governmental statutory and carrier requirements, CCMSI relies heavily on data and documents being stored, managed, and always current. Before 2009, the TPA handled most risk management documents, information, and work flow manually. This was a slow and cumbersome process and required extensive employee time in manual data uploading and retrieval and a large amount of office space for paper storage.
Having heard of SmartCompliance from industry partners, CCMSI approached the solutions provider in need of a system that would automate their document, data, and work flow management and make data securely available online. The TPA’s insurance team provides outsourced certificate management in the form of collection and issuance to firms across the country. In processing the documents and accepting the liabilities attached, CCMSI requires high levels of data security, compliance and maintenance.
CCMSI began using SmartCompliance to collect, upload, store, retrieve and issue certificate of insurance documents and data in the secure online portal of the software. From there, certificates could be automatically organized, compared to risk templates for compliance, and checked for errors and missing data. CCMSI was finally able to receive automatic, paperless notifications of any inconsistencies or irregularities. The automatic certificate tracking and renewal capabilities significantly improved risk mitigation and guaranteed regulatory compliance. And the low capital investment required for a web-based, no installation subscription Software as a Service (SaaS) proved to be a promising model for multiplying return on investment. The added reporting capabilities, generating custom, instant reports on insureds, communications and data, also enabled quicker responses for claims subrogation – fulfilling requests that previously took several days in just a couple of hours.
“With the database search and reporting capabilities, we are able to automate another huge part of our business and do so without creating an entirely new set of databases and without having to learn a ton of new functionalities.”
With SmartCompliance, CCMSI is able to improve the services provided to their key clients, reduce data administration and management costs, eliminate the need for file cabinets and centralize all employee, vendor and holder documents and data into one system for unprecedented collaboration, communication, and monitoring. Various system reports can be generated with the click of a button. Data encryption and security is guaranteed at all times.
Hierarchies, employee, and document types have been customized and organized to fit their business needs. System templates and an electronic file inbox have made repetitive certificate of insurance collection and issuance manual processes obsolete. Employing the most current capabilities in risk management technology has put this third party administrator in first place.
“SmartCompliance is a best-of-breed package that covers more functionalities than most of its competitors. The software allows for a great degree of consolidation and integration of processes, and the ease of use of the system makes for a more productive and efficient administrative team. “We’re not sure if we can learn a new software” is no longer a relevant excuse for any TPA. I’d highly recommend such a solution to any risk and insurance companies looking to streamline document and work flow management, improve the services they provide for clients, and improve the collective sanity and efficiency of their organization.”
“As we continued to grow our operations nationally, the process and man power to manage compliance documents and corresponding data across large geographical regions was ineffective, tedious and time consuming. We knew we needed technology that could connect all the necessary dots and make it easy to store, manage, and retrieve all of our data and automate processes like insurance certificate collection and issuance,”
