Chubb and Arista Join Electronic Reconciliation

Two more Insurers have gone with Electronic Reconciliation CGI, an IT and business process services company, today announced the addition of two new insurers to its award-winning Account Reconciliation Centre (ARC). The electronic collections tool, developed by CGI in a partnership with Norwich Union and Allianz, streamlines the accounts reconciliation process, eliminating the previous paper-based system.

Chubb Insurance Company of Europe has announced that it will be going live on ARC in the first half of 2009, while Arista Insurance has already started using the system.

ARC, recently awarded the Technology Initiative of the Year at the Insurance Times Awards, was introduced in December 2007 and already has over 700 brokers using the service and more than (pnds stlg)200m in balances being reconciled each month.
Peter Young, Head of Business Operations at Arista, says, "Arista's operational philosophy is based on streamlining our trading processes to minimise frictional costs. We have always issued statements by email but this only delivers partial benefits with brokers still returning paper by post. ARC enables us to manage queries online with brokers and in time integrate with our back-office systems to allow automatic reconciliation."

Young continues, "We originally planned to build our own online accounts system for brokers. However, joining ARC means we can provide our brokers with online facilities a year ahead of schedule at a much lower cost. Brokers already using ARC are able to immediately get access to our statements and we will roll out to the remainder of the Arista agency base during the first half of 2009."

Liz Latter, Head of the UK Credit Risk Practice at CGI explains, "In a world where credit risk management has never been more important, ARC is allowing insurers to realise tangible benefits and better manage their collections. In recent years insurers have often concentrated on their sales and claims processes and have simply assumed that the money would be collected somewhere, somehow. However, in the current climate, the focus is shifting and visibility on outstanding debt is now seen as critical."

The ARC tool, accessible via iMarket, provides an online view of insurers' statements giving visibility of reconciliation activity and enabling real-time collections and query management between brokers and insurers.

Liz Latter concluded, "ARC can really help insurers improve and speed up the collections process. The first two insurers who have been live on the system for over a year cite significant savings such as a 25% reduction in outstanding queries, a 7-day reduction in debtor days and a 35% reduction in bad debt. With brokers encouraging more insurers to sign-up to ARC and insurers feeling the pressures of credit management, we are seeing this electronic industry solution take off."