Payment processing plays a pivotal role in the insurance sector, especially crucial in today’s digital era where the expectation is for instant, secure, and flawless transactions. Effective payment processing systems ensure prompt and precise collection of premiums and expedite the settlement of claims, thereby fostering trust and satisfaction among customers. In the digital space, this necessitates the integration of payment gateways, the automation of reconciliation processes, and the secure handling of sensitive financial information, all contributing to a seamless customer journey. Additionally, digital payment processing allows insurance companies to gather and scrutinize transaction data, offering insights for enhanced operational efficiency.

Client: A mid sized personal lines insurance carrier.

Problem statement:

The client had multiple Policy (6), Billing (5) and Payment (8) systems. Client ended up having these many systems due to various mergers and acquisitions and in the midst of transforming their policy and billing systems to next gen systems.  This complex environment resulted in complex integrations for payment processing and multitude challenges such as

• Inability to reconcile
• Lack of audit controls
• Payment transaction used to hop through multiple intermediate systems
• Resulted in poor customer experience (inconsistent and inaccurate billing information, duplicate payments, dropped/missing payments, delay in posting payments to billing system, etc.)
• PCI compliance challenges
• Intermediate MS Access & Excel based solutions to support payment processes and reporting

Client were looking for a partner to help transform their payment processing with following objectives:

• Simplify payment processing
• PCI compliant
• Enable audit controls
• Reduce back office operational processes (manual processes with sizable team)

Current state analysis
– We performed a detailed analysis to understand current state challenges and documented.
– Detailed integration document that mapped what type of payments are processed by which system and how those payments are posted to billing system.
Design and Implementation
– Designed payment journey that provided detailed mapping of insured’s payment journey across payment channels and payment types.
– We ramped up team and implemented a modular payment system (Bill due lookup, payment processor, vault for CC & accounts, recurring payments, wallet, reconciliation, suspense, etc.)
– The solution also streamlined financial & GL reporting
– We delivered the solution in 2 phases with first phase with core capabilities implemented in under 7 months (phase 1) and phase 2 in 4 months.

Technology Landscape

Backend REST APIs built using Java/JEE Spring framework, Batch interfaces built using Informatica, with MS SQL Server as database, Angular as the front end technology, observability using Dynatrace, end-to-end encryption at rest and in transit

• PCI Compliance (with flying colors)
• Clear and concise auditability
• Improved customer experience & service NPS
• Reduced overall spend by $2M per year
• Repurposed back office operations team to focus on other key policy & claims functions
• ROI in under two years
• A centralized solution that processes USD 4.5 Billion in premium payments