Case Study: Utmost Life and Pensions

Customer Self-Service: Investments Management

"The MyUtmost project implemented by the Papyrus team was our crowning glory and a great success in 2022"CEO of Utmost Life and Pension.

Business Results

• First-class customer service
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Increased business and operational efficiencies
• Reduced print output
• Substantial time and cost savings
• Strategic platform for growth

Snapshot

• Organization: Utmost Life & Pensions
• Business Challenge: Replace the Utmost customer portal with a modern self-service portal solution
• Goals: Self-service for an improved customer experience; design and maintenance of business communication by business users (documents and self-service forms).
• Integration: Papyrus integrates seamlessly through TypeManagers, LDAP Adapter and Papyrus Portal solution
• Solution: Adaptive Case Management, Business Designer, Content Services

The Company

Utmost Life and Pensions, a growing Life & Pensions provider in the globally renowned UK insurance market, has grown as a result of a merger and amalgamation of a number of companies since 1911. The company has 380,000 customers, with £7bn of assets, and is part of the wider Utmost Group Ltd, currently managing £37bn assets under administration with over 500,000 customers.

The Challenge

In the fast-paced digital world, customers expect quick and convenient access to services and support. With multiple legacy systems in place for up to 30 years, Utmost Life and Pensions needed to transform its existing customer service process to ensure high quality of service and reduce costs.

The Solution

The new solution was designed with the existing Utmost Papyrus installation and products in mind to enable a smooth adoption. In less than 6 months from deciding to partner with Papyrus, the new Image and Workflow system was launched. The solution is tailored to the Utmost's specific requirements and implemented as a flexible, 'fit-for-future' solution to easily scale and grow with the Utmost's business, please see here.

As a next step, an initiative was taken to replace the existing Utmost portal with a modern solution that would enable customer self-service and provide customers with the convenience they desire.

Building Agility in Customer Service

One of the key requirements of Utmost was to provide the business with flexibility and greater control. Being familiar with business processes, products and services, business users are the obvious choice when it comes to ensuring accuracy to meet business requirements. Given the right tools, they can self-service their needs without depending on IT or third parties to develop and implement changes.

“Empowerment of the business” is central to the Papyrus Platform and is supported with strong Business Designer tools designed to meet the needs of non-technical users. Having intuitive tools at their disposal, business users at Utmost can now easily define, enhance and manage self-service forms, define logic and validation, as well as select data and services - without any coding. The new way of working frees up IT resources, and leads to increased efficiency and agility.

Self-service: Policy Management

Registrations and access to the new "MyUtmost" portal take place at any time of the day or night. In a very short time, Utmost had over 15,000 registrations and is still receiving new registrations every day. When logging into the portal, customers' identities are verified by Two-factor Authentication (2FA) using a password and a unique verification code sent to the customer's mobile device or email address, preventing unauthorized access. They can review the current status of their funds and switch/reallocate investments, which is a straightforward process that gives clients better control over their finances and saves Utmost customer support teams a lot of time.

Customers who were calling daily to check on policy values or provide reallocation instructions were the first to make use of the MyUtmost portal. What is most interesting, however, is that 85% of “MyUtmost” inquiries come from policyholders who have not rebalanced in at least two years, showing that a new communication channel successfully can open up interactions with less engaged policyholders.

Self-service: My Messages & Documents

With 'My Messages' customers have an access to customer service teams and can easily upload documents, send messages and receive answers. Since 'going live', Utmost has seen thousands of messages to/from customers covering a range of topics from amending names, changing their retirement dates to queries about values. In addition, the “MyDocuments” functionality helps Utmost reduce its environmental impact and save costs by giving customers instant access to their annual statements and other relevant information instead of sending by mail.

Self-service: My Detalis

The 'My Details' functionality allows customers to update their information at any time without the need to contact customer support or visit a physical location. The solution supports accessing externally available public services, such as lookup based on postal codes, sending a confirmation email and notification once the change has been processed.At a very short time Utmost registered +1,000 changes that have been made as straight through processes such as change of address, phone numbers and email addresses. This is all work that the Customer Services team no longer has to deal with.

Project Outcomes & Impact

The self-service project exceeded all expectations.

• Self-service options provide quick and easy access to information and services without wait times, enhancing the overall customer experience (CX) and saving costs.
• Customers have direct access to customer support via the portal, but the number of calls has decreased significantly. This allows Utmost to save costs and allocate resources to other business areas.
• And lastly, self-service channels provide the business with valuable customer data and insights that are going to help Utmost improve products and services, and provide a more personalized experience to customers.