In order to help achieve its ambitious growth plans and maintain its commitment to end-to-end process excellence and putting customers at the heart of everything it does, a leading global health care benefits company faced the challenge of improving the efficiency of its claims payment processes.

Problem…

The company needed to reduce the amount of resource-intensive, manual intervention required to process and initiate a foreign currency payment, as it currently processes claim payments in over 200 countries worldwide. Not only were these manual processes leading to high administrative costs, but they also contributed to a higher number of payment errors. Each time the company submitted bank account details that were incomplete or in the wrong format, the insurer incurred additional transactional fees as payments had to be manually re-processed and initiated. The additional time to process these payments also led to decreased satisfaction for both members and providers.

As such, the insurer needed a solution that could be easily integrated within its own, existing applications and one that was able to capture and validate the correct beneficiary bank account and payment routing information before the company submitted payment instructions to Citi.

By automating the capture and validation of bank account details via its secure online member and provider websites, the company would be able to remove the manual payment initiation process and reduce error rates and correction costs for failed payments, while also lowering the overall cost of payment processing and significantly improving the overall customer experience. In addition, this scalable solution would help support the company’s growth plans while continuing to deliver optimal customer service.

…Solved

Experian Payments’ Bank Wizard Global is the international payment validation solution that enables banks and corporates to maximise straight through processing (STP) of payments. The solution uses the most comprehensive payment data, financial institution information and validation capabilities available, for over 220 countries worldwide.

Using Bank Wizard Global to validate the bank details of its insurance claim payees at the start of the payment process, the insurer is able to ensure its payments reach the correct beneficiaries across the globe quickly, efficiently and with minimal risk of failure.

As part of the project, Experian Payments also provided the company with consultancy services to help them migrate to Citi’s WorldLink® platform, the bank’s cross-border, global payment system for corporates and financial institutions.

Introducing an automated payment validation solution that removes manual processes has enabled the insurer to comply with Citi’s user guidelines for international ACH and wire payments, while improving its STP rates for cross-border and international payments. Bank Wizard Global also allows the insurer to validate BBANs and generate associated IBANs and BICs, particularly for territories within the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).

The solution is now live. Using Citi to transfer claim payments, Bank Wizard Global allows the company to promptly reimburse personal claimants and hospitals in foreign currencies via the lowest cost method, whilst also halving the claims cycle for people seeking medical treatment abroad.

The company comments, “From day one we were impressed by Experian Payments’ collaborative approach and technical expertise, due to their ability to understand our requirements and those of our bank, Citi. We needed help interpreting specific technical requirements of certain countries and Experian Payments was able to come up with a set of solutions that suited both of our needs.”