Technical FAQs for "FormSuite for Structured Forms"

Few organizations will view the final weeks of 2020 as a bittersweet moment. In addition to the staggering human toll inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic, entire industries saw longstanding business models upended, forcing companies to completely rethink their relationships with employees, vendors, and customers. The financial services industry was no exception, and 2020 saw FinTech becoming more important than ever as firms rushed to embrace digital transformation in response to the ongoing crisis. Many of these trends appear poised to continue well into 2021 and beyond. 

FinTech Defined

FinTech is short for “financial technology,” but the term itself is applied quite broadly throughout the financial services industry. It can be used to refer to a new generation of non-traditional startup companies focused on building digital tools that allow people to manage their finances in new ways that disrupt established industry practices. The term is also sometimes used to describe the technology itself, however, especially since established financial organizations are investing heavily in innovative applications and services of their own.

FinTech Trends for 2021

Although 2020 is sure to be remembered as a year of unprecedented disruption, 2021 might well come to be known as a year of remarkable adaptation and transformation. Now that organizations have developed innovative digital strategies to navigate a more volatile economic landscape, they must now take up the challenge of putting those plans into practice.

FinTech developers need to keep an eye on these trends as they build new applications and services in order to provide the functionality and performance demanded by the financial industry. Many established firms will be taking a long look at their infrastructure and technology solutions to assess whether or not their current systems are up to the challenge of digital transformation. If their existing platforms fall short, they will need to either seek out new FinTech products with more robust feature sets or explore options for integrating new capabilities into their legacy software.

Top 5 FinTech Trends to Watch in 2021

1. Customer-Centric Applications

The proliferation of FinTech solutions has brought customers to the forefront of every financial organization’s thoughts. Where the financial industry once designed processes and applications to suit their own needs, today they must focus on delivering a high-quality customer experience if they want to remain competitive in a crowded marketplace. The process often begins with reducing friction wherever possible to help end-users get the products and services they need faster. With customers increasingly interacting with the financial industry across multiple channels, FinTech developers must build solutions that strengthen those connections and expand their potential.

Eliminating manual processes, cutting down on external software dependencies, and automating routine tasks will continue to be a major point of emphasis for FinTech applications. Customers no longer have the patience to repeatedly fill out lengthy forms or go through the frustrating process of downloading, printing, signing, and scanning documents. By building document viewing, file conversion, and data capture capabilities into their applications, FinTech developers can provide firms with a unified digital solution that addresses multiple needs and streamlines their customer experience.

2. Digital-First Collaboration

According to an IDG study on the enduring business impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic, about 40% of employees are expected to be working remotely on a semi-permanent basis as of January 2021. That means financial organizations will continue to need digital tools in place to provide secure access to files and facilitate collaboration. Physical documents must first be converted into a variety of digital formats with high levels of accuracy and then made available to remote users without compromising data integrity or creating confusion over version history. 

Without a dedicated solution on hand for viewing, editing, and managing documents, users are forced to resort to a variety of ad hoc workarounds and third party software solutions that can quickly compromise data security and increase the likelihood of errors. By integrating those features into their FinTech applications, developers can help firms keep all of their documents and files safely within a secure infrastructure while still making them available through easy-to-use web-based API tools.

3. Big Data Management

Financial organizations continue to collect huge amounts of data in the course of their business. Some of this data is unstructured and must be processed using powerful analytics tools to identify important trends and potential risks that can help firms make better strategic decisions. But they also gather a great deal of structured data as well, typically from structured forms like loan applications, tax documents, and bank statements. Managing all of this information more efficiently will be an important goal for 2021 because having good data insights is essential for identifying opportunities, optimizing products and services, and automating essential services.

FinTech developers can help improve data processing by building applications capable of extracting information quickly and accurately. Financial data algorithms are quite good at identifying different types of data and sorting it into the proper place for analysis, but they’re often slowed down by documents that are damaged or difficult to read. Thanks to software integrations that provide robust image cleanup, document alignment, and form recognition tools, FinTech applications can ensure that firms are starting with the cleanest possible source data when extracting information for processing.

4. Pandemic Proofing

Although there are several promising COVID-19 vaccines on the horizon, challenges with supply and distribution will keep most companies operating under the same social distancing and remote workplace guidelines they put in place in 2020 for much of the year. Even if restrictions are lifted earlier than expected, the risk-averse financial industry will continue to think about how to avoid similar disruptions by implementing paperless processes and electronic data capture options. Just as retailers and manufacturers are rethinking their supply chain infrastructure, financial services companies must reassess their FinTech applications in light of recent challenges.

Developers can help the financial industry better “pandemic proof” their processes by integrating better document viewing, file conversion, and data capture tools into their software solutions. Not only can they automate traditionally time-consuming (and error-prone) manual data entry tasks, but they can also build in additional functionality to auto-generate data for new contracts and allow people to sign documents digitally to eliminate the need for face-to-face meetings. 

5. Banking Partnerships

Banks and other traditional financial institutions are increasingly partnering with FinTech startups to reach new customers and engage with existing clients over new channels. As Deloitte noted in a recent study, the pandemic has removed many of the obstacles to digital transformation in the financial industry and forced many established firms to pour tremendous resources into their tools and infrastructure. But as banks engage with innovative startups, they will need to find ways to integrate operations and data quickly to remain competitive and roll out new services successfully.

That integration process will be easier if they have flexible software solutions in place that can navigate multiple file types, perform cleanup and conversion, and extract essential data quickly and accurately. Whether they’re building that functionality into entirely new applications or integrating features into existing legacy systems, FinTech developers will play a key role in helping financial organizations accelerate their merger and partnership timetables so they can begin reaping the benefits more quickly. 

Solving Your FinTech Challenges with Accusoft

Accusoft’s collection of RESTful APIs and SDKs provide FinTech developers with the tools they need to build comprehensive content processing, conversion, and automation solutions into software applications. Whether you’re using PrizmDoc Suite to view, edit, and convert documents directly inside their financial applications, capturing valuable financial data from various form types with FormSuite for Structured Forms, or embedding powerful image cleanup, OCR, and annotation tools into your application with ImageGear, our family of software integrations allow you to add the functionality your FinTech solutions need to meet the challenges of 2021 and beyond.

To learn more about how our software tools can enhance your FinTech applications, talk to one of our integration experts today.

While digital transformation initiatives have been climbing the FinTech priority list for years, Eli Rosner of Finastra notes that thanks to COVID-19, “It feels like the fast forward button has been pressed.” Firms must now embrace the realities of remote work and rising consumer expectations even as investor patience wears thin on reliable ROI.

The result is a FinTech landscape that’s more than meets the eye. To deliver on transformative deployments, companies must look past familiar fintech trends to uncover key challenges, assess acceleration issues, and recognize the realities of digital revolution.

The Challenges of Change for FinTech Companies

FinTech solutions emerged as harbingers of change. Frustrated by restrictive policies and cumbersome processes, financial technology companies embraced the market reality of application-driven enterprises capable of meeting consumers on their own terms. But even these tech-first solutions couldn’t predict current challenges. As noted by recent Deloitte research, FinTech firms now face both external and internal barriers to effective change.

Externally, investors remain an ongoing challenge as their patience for digital revenue delivery wears thin. While they recognize the need for transformative spend, they’re not willing to wait years on steady returns. Internally, lacking enterprise agility now hampers the ability of finance technology firms to deploy new partnerships and coordinate digital innovation at scale. Changing market forces are creating unprecedented challenges for FinTech firms.

The Acceleration of Adoption

Even as enterprises grapple with evolving change frameworks, the global pandemic continues to push companies out of their comfort zone, forcing firms to quickly implement multichannel solutions capable of connecting with customers anywhere, anytime. Consider that 35 percent of banking customers have embraced more online options, while contactless credit card payments have jumped by 40 percent over the past few months.  

In effect, the COVID-19 crisis has revealed a need for speed that’s far beyond the comfort zone of many FinTech firms. The result of this adoption acceleration is equal parts potential and problem. Companies can’t afford to slow down, but need a better view of what lies ahead.

The Realities of Revolution

To overcome emerging challenges and embrace agile application adoption at speed, FinTech firms must leverage a two-step process that first recognizes the real-life impact of digital revolutions and then deploys specific solutions to improve operational outcomes.

In practice, this means addressing four new realities:  

1. Customer-First Frameworks

As noted by Deloitte, the shift to customer centricity is often viewed as an enabler. If companies are able to deliver seamless, client-first experiences through common digital channels, they can significantly raise their reputational stock with consumers. But it’s one thing to recognize the reality of customer-first frameworks and another to implement them at scale. Here, fintech firms are best-served with workflow automation tools capable of streamlining key processes — such as loan applications and credit checks — to help reduce the time between customer inquiry and response.

2. Complex Document Functions

With clients and staff now working and interacting remotely, FinTech firms are facing a substantive uptick in the volume and variety of digital documents they receive — and they need to process ASAP. Here, complexity itself doesn’t represent the full spectrum of change, since regulatory and compliance controls are familiar challenges for FinTech companies. Instead, it’s the velocity of complex document processing that can quickly overwhelm even experienced FinTech software as they look to process applications and approvals at speed without sacrificing security or consistency. Comprehensive, industry-compliant document management tools can help FinTech firms bridge the complexity gap.

3. Comprehensive Data Foundations 

Spreadsheets remain essential for traditional firms and FinTech solutions alike. As data volumes grow, organizations face issues related to information-entry errors, version consistency, and data security. To ensure foundational finance data is accurately collected, consistently applied, and always protected, FinTech solutions need to deploy next-generation spreadsheet solutions capable of giving end-users the control and security they need.

Collaborative FinTech Forces

To deliver on client expectations around speed and security, FinTech solutions require SDKs that natively support document collaboration and control without introducing security risks such as unauthorized editing, downloading, or sharing. This means equipping their applications with the operational infrastructure that facilitates everything from editing and commenting to robust redaction, annotation, and file conversion.

FinTech in 2020: The Only Constant Is Change

The global business landscape in 2020 has been anything but predictable. Defined by pandemic pressures and driven by increasingly sophisticated digital initiatives, FinTech companies have managed what seemed impossible only a few years ago. They made a speedy shift to remote work that now delivers rapid customer responses while reducing overall risk.

However, it’s important to note that the market movement isn’t over. As COVID conditions continue to evolve and consumers recognize the value of advanced FinTech solutions, the only constant in FinTech industry this year is change.

From large payouts and losses in some segments to rapid growth in others, the insurance industry has experienced seismic shifts due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. To keep some semblance of normalcy during these changes and the aftermath, organizations are turning to InsurTech solutions for help. 

According to Deloitte, InsurTech investments remain strong, with COVID-19 simply shifting priorities to virtual customer engagement and operational efficiency rather than cutting budgets. Data collected by Venture Scanner indicates that the global InsurTech market generated $2.2B in the first half of 2020.

The Challenge of Advancing a Product to Meet Immediate Needs

Tasks once completed manually at insurance companies can bottleneck an entire system in just a few days and prevent insurers from winning much-needed revenue. For this reason, providers are scrambling to make fast efficiency gains while minimizing risks that could lead to unrealized business opportunities due to slow processing. When it’s feast or famine, with customers either signing up or making claims in droves, there’s no time to waste.

As a product developer in the InsurTech space, this puts you in a precarious position. After all, how can you add functionality overnight when it takes time to build those new capabilities? While some organizations may have the available workforce to rally and build new features quickly, most don’t. 

If you’re like most in the development space, finding and retaining talent is a challenge. What’s more, they’re likely already looking at a project backlog spanning many months—if not years. For this reason, augmenting existing solutions with white-label, third-party plug-ins is an attractive option. Now, let’s turn our attention to the type of functionality insurers need to navigate recent shifts.

4 Essential Capabilities for the Insurance Industry in the Wake of COVID-19

Pew Research found that by June of 2020 roughly 3% of Americans had already made a mass exodus from highly populated areas like New York, New York and San Francisco, California due to challenges posed by the COVID-19 global pandemic. This number has likely grown since June and will likely continue to grow as hubs of economic growth continue to shift and settle. 

For each insured individual that moves and retains insurance coverage, there’s paperwork. For many, they’ll even switch providers as their previous provider may not be able to provide competitive rates in their new location. The sheer change-management involved in migrations of this scale is daunting. Without the ability to process requests faster, insurance companies could find themselves struggling to keep up. 

To help your insurance industry clients effectively navigate the road ahead, your applications need to include greater data-capture, data-conversion, and optical character recognition technologies that reduce the need for manual intervention in document processing. 

1. Data Capture Efficiency  

As the number of file formats increases, insurance organizations need the ability to quickly capture and process hundreds of different image formats. Beyond simply capturing them, they often also need to aggregate and convert those multiple formats into a single, secure, and digitally accessible PDF.

Rather than trying to build everything from scratch, sometimes partnering with a third-party software developer can give you a leg up on all the delivery time associated with expanding feature sets for the insurance industry.  

Essential Capabilities Should Include:

• Support for multiple file formats
• Automated image-correction and optical character recognition technology
• Clean integration that maintains or improves processing speed 

Once data is captured, it then needs to be managed. To explore document management capabilities to consider when expanding your feature set for the insurance industry, click here. 

2. Identify Form Fields

Whether potential buyers are requesting new policies or current customers are evaluating existing policies, precise and efficient data-capture technologies can improve the ability of insurers to access important data and analyze policies. Adding these capabilities requires quite a bit of strategy. First, one must consider the core challenges involved in effective data capture: 

• Poor inputs that aren’t easy to correct and capture 
• Poorly designed forms that reduce image recognition success  
• Imaging technology that can’t recognize a robust number of file formats and fonts 

When contemplating the structure of boxes for character collection, our experts found that using a square shape rather than a rectangle results in less data loss. While rectangles may, at first, appear to save space and therefore be a more effective option, research showed that they typically don’t provide the average user enough space to clearly write letters or characters without interfacing with the boundary lines. Thus, square boxes improve data transfer success. 

Figure 1: Examples of ineffective rectangular boxes versus effective square boxes for character capture. 

This is just one factor to consider when streamlining form processing within an insurance technology application. To explore more research on this topic, download the Best Practices: Improving ICR Accuracy with Better Form Design whitepaper.  

3. Confidence Value Reporting for Data Recognition

Not all optical character recognition technology is created equal. That’s why it’s important to make sure any solution you either create internally or partner with a third party to integrate provides ongoing confidence value reporting for data recognition. Having this capability in place can alert you to problems before they lead to costly issues — like duplicated efforts, a poor customer experience, or incomplete data hindering contract processing. 

4. Use OCR to Identify Different Documents

Optical character recognition (OCR) can help insurance companies cut down on manual effort by identifying different forms automatically, which equips application developers like you to create automation within your company’s product that routes identified forms through predefined workflows. 

Without OCR, significant manual effort is required to process forms required to execute insurance contracts. When evaluating OCR capabilities to add to applications, keep in mind these essentials:

• Successful Character Recognition Rates – Given the highly regulated nature of insurance along with high fines for shortcomings, it’s often well worth the extra investment to get a solution with 99% accuracy versus 95%. 

• Multi-Document Recognition with High Confidence Values– Given the broad number of file types insurance organizations receive, having a software package in place that cleans up documents before running them through optical character recognition tools improves the likelihood of extracted data being usable. With cleaner data in hand, insurance agents are empowered to make better recommendations to customers, ensuring they’re not over or under insured.

These are just a few items to consider when adding document viewing and forms processing features to your application. While automated workflows may have given organizations heartburn in the past, the reality is that high-volume, fast-changing environments can’t survive without them. Markets are changing so quickly that without automation to help bring order to the chaos, the tidal wave of requests will overtake the underprepared. 

Help your clients better respond to not only COVID-19, but also future-proof their ability to streamline claims by expanding document viewing and form processing capabilities. To learn more about our insurtech capabilities, explore our content solutions for insurance companies.      

Post-secondary schools look very different this year as colleges and universities embrace both blended learning and online-only approaches to content delivery and engagement. But this isn’t a one-off operation. Even as pandemic pressures ease, the shift to distance learning as the de facto solution for many students won’t disappear.  As a result, it’s critical for schools to develop and deploy learning management systems (LMSs) that both meet current needs and ensure they’re capable of keeping up with educational evolution. But what does this look like in practice? How do developers and team leaders build fully-functional LMS solutions that empower student success without breaking the bank?

Learning Management Systems (LMS) Challenges

When schools first made the shift to distance learning directives, speed was of the essence. While students were barred from campus for safety reasons, they’d paid for a full semester of instruction, and schools needed to deliver. As a result, patchwork programs became commonplace. Colleges and universities combined existing education software with video conferencing and collaboration tools to create “good enough” learning models that got them through to summer break. Despite best educational efforts, however, some students still went after schools with lawsuits, alleging that the quality of instruction didn’t align with tuition totals.

So it’s no surprise that as fall semesters kick off, students aren’t willing to put up with learning management systems that barely make the grade. They want full-featured distance learning that helps them engage with instructors and connect with new content no matter how, where, or when they access campus networks. 

As a result, development teams can’t simply correct for current COVID conditions. Instead, they need to create systems that deliver both blended and purely online interactions, and have the power to ensure students that choose to continue with digital-first learning can still stay connected even after returns to campus become commonplace.

How to Create a Functional LMS Framework

So what does a fully-functional LMS framework look like in practice? Six features are critical for ongoing success. Let’s explore how these features can enhance your learning management system and set your end-users up for success in the classroom and at home:

Diverse Document Viewing

As schools make the shift to distance learning, the ability to view multiple document types is critical for long-term LMS success. From standard Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations to more diverse image types — such as those used in medical educational programming or manufacturing courses — students and instructors need the ability to both send and view diverse document types on-demand. 

While both free and paid solutions for viewing exist outside LMS ecosystems, choosing this route creates two potential problems. Students with diverse technological and economic backgrounds may face challenges in finding and using these tools, and data security may be compromised. This is especially critical as schools handle greater volumes of students’ personal and financial information. If document viewing happens outside internal systems, private concerns become paramount.

In-Depth Annotations

With students now submitting assignments and exams via educational software, viewing isn’t enough. Staff also need the ability to annotate assets as they arrive. Here, professors and teaching assistants are best-served by built-in tools that allow them to quickly redline papers or projects, add comments, highlight key passages, and quickly markup documents with specific instructions or corrections. 

Without this ability, staff have two equally unappealing choices. They can either print out, manually correct, and then re-scan documents, or send all comments as separate email attachments. Both are problematic, since they limit the ability of students and teachers to easily interact with the same document.

Comprehensive Conversion

File conversion is critical for effective learning management systems (LMSs). Specifically, schools need ways to quickly convert multiple document types into single, searchable PDFs. Not only do PDFs offer the ability to control who can edit, view, or comment on papers or exams, they make it easy for teachers to quickly find specific content. The permissions-based nature of PDFs makes them ideal for post-secondary applications and a must-have for any education software solution. 

Cutting-Edge OCR and ICR

Optical character recognition and intelligent character recognition also forms a key part of distance learning directives. With some students still more comfortable with hand-written hard copies and some classes that require students to show specific work, OCR can help bridge the gap between form and function. By integrating tools with the ability to recognize and convert multiple character types and sets, schools are better equipped to deal with any document type. Search is also bolstered by cutting-edge OCR; instead of forcing staff to manually examine documents for key data, OCR empowers digital discovery.

Complete Data Capture

Forms are a fundamental part of university and college life — but the myriad of digital documents can quickly overwhelm legacy education software. Integrating tools with robust form-field detection allow schools and staff to streamline the process of complete data capture, both increasing the speed of information processing and reducing the potential for human error.

Barcode Benefits

As campuses shift to hybrid learning models, students occupy two worlds, both physical and digital. But this duality introduces complexity when it comes to tracking who’s on campus, when, and why. These are currently key metrics for schools looking to keep students safe in the era of social distancing. 

By deploying full-featured barcode scanning solutions as part of LMS frameworks, colleges and universities can get ahead of this complexity curve. From scanning ID cards to take attendance and track resource use to using barcodes as no-contact purchase points or metric measurements for ongoing analytics, barcode solutions are an integral part of LMS solutions.

Automation Advantages

The sheer volume of digital documents now generated and handled by post-secondary schools poses the problem of practicality. Teachers and administrators simply don’t have time to evaluate and enter data at scale and speed while also ensuring accuracy. By automating key processes including document conversion, capture, and character recognition, schools can reduce the time required to process documents, leaving more room for student engagement.

Building an LMS Product for Teachers & Students

The bottom line for LMS solutions? If they don’t work for end-users, they won’t work for the broader school system as a whole. Gone are the days of invisible IT infrastructure. Now, students and staff alike are school stakeholders with evolving expectations around technology.

By deploying distance learning solutions that prioritize end-user outcomes with enhanced document viewing, editing, data capture, and automation, developers can create LMS tools capable of both solving immediate issues and offering sustained student success over time. Learn more about these functionality integrations for your learning management system at accusoft.com/products. 

The insurance market is booming. As noted by research firm Deloitte, the property and casualty (P&C) sector saw a massive income uptick in 2018 and steady growth last year that’s predicted to carry forward through 2020. To help manage the influx of new clients and handle more claims, many firms are spending on insurance technology (insurtech) — digital services and solutions that make it possible to reduce error rates and enhance operational efficiency. InsurTech SDKs are important components of this transformation.

Both in-house insurtech solutions and third-party platforms often excel in specific areas but come up short in others, putting insurance firms at risk of writing off potential gains. While solution switching and ground-floor rebuilds offer one route to success, there’s another option that’s more custom to your business needs: software development kits (SDKs). Here’s a look at three top SDKs that offer customized functionality potential.

FormSuite for Structured Forms: Solving for Data Capture

Time is money. The faster insurance companies accurately complete and file documents, the greater their revenue potential. And as noted by KPMG, the need for speed is more pressing than ever. Many insurance sectors have seen substantial increases in both claims and new applications as the COVID-19 crisis evolves. 

As a result, accurate and agile forms processing is critical to keep up with demand. If current insurance software can’t quickly capture forms data, recognize standard form fields, and let users easily create standard form libraries, policy processing falls behind.

FormSuite for Structured Forms makes it easy for developers to build in form identification and data capture that includes comprehensive form field detection with OCR, ICR, and OMR functionality and the ability to automatically identify scanned forms and match them to existing templates.

ImageGear for .NET and C/C++: Simplifying Conversion

Conversion is critical for insurance firms. Depending on the type and complexity of insurance claims, companies are often dealing with everything from Word documents for initial client assessments and .GIF or .JPG images of existing damage to contractor-specific PDFs or spreadsheets that detail necessary materials, time, and labor costs. The result? A mash-up of multiple file types that forces adjusters to spend valuable time searching for specific data instead of helping clients get their claims process up and running. This makes it difficult to recognize value from emerging digital initiatives. 

Accusoft’s ImageGear for .NET and ImageGear for C/C++ empower developers to integrate enterprise-class file viewing, annotation, conversion, and image processing functions into existing applications, allowing staff to both quickly collaborate on key tasks and find essential data across a single, easy-to-search document.

ImageGear: Streamlining PDF Capabilities

While insurance technology offers substantive opportunities for end-users to capture, convert, and retain data, this technology can also come with the challenge of increased complexity. According to recent research from PWC, for example, firms looking to capitalize on insurtech potential must be prepared to rapidly develop new product offerings and embrace the expectations. 

As a result, companies need applications that streamline current functions and allow them to focus on creating cutting-edge solutions. For example, PDF is a file format that is still used by enterprises worldwide to maintain document format consistency and maximize security. When it comes to converting multiple files into a PDF, software can be expensive and introduce data security issues. 

This can all be solved with an SDK like ImageGear, which makes it possible to integrate the total PDF package into any document management application, both reducing overall complexity and freeing up time for staff to work on new insurance initiatives.

Insurtech forms the framework of functional futures in policy applications, claims processing, and compliance reporting, but existing software systems may not provide the complete capability set companies need to make the most of digital deployments. These top SDKs offer insurance IT teams the ability to integrate key services, improve speed, and boost security at scale. Learn more about Accusoft’s SDKs at www.accusoft.com/products. 

The COVID-19 crisis has permanently changed the way banks do business. While many financial firms were already shifting away from brick-and-mortar branches toward both mobile and digital alternatives, pervasive pandemic priorities required a rapid shift in physical presence — forcing companies to rapidly react with remote work alternatives.

Some — such as JPMorgan — were already prepping for potential shifts in early March, deploying a pilot project that saw 10% of its 125,000 employees working from home. Banks like BMO, meanwhile, have embraced the new normal. The company says that around 36,000 staff members may permanently split their time between home and corporate offices. 

While this focus on employee efficacy and engagement is critical, productive people aren’t the only element of remote work success. Security and speed are two of the qualities that consumers now expect across all key banking functions, and firms must prioritize digital processes that streamline these processes without compromising financial requirements. 

But what does this look like in practice? How do organizations handle document management, process automation, and employee collaboration at a distance — without breaking the bank?

Facing Financial Frustrations

When work-from-home went from “maybe” to mandate, Deutsche Bank found itself racing to keep up. With just a few thousand out of its 90,000-strong workforce already working remotely, the firm was under pressure to scale capabilities quickly — from reimbursing staff for device purchase to rolling out video conferencing tools for more than 50,000 employees in less than two weeks, the bank has been under pressure to deliver remote work processes that deliver both continuity and compliance.

With finance firms historically lagging on technology adoption, however, this presents a significant problem. While cloud-based communication and collaboration tools are now commonplace — and can be readily adapted to work-from-home environments — the tools and tech necessary to underpin key financial functions are often tied to in-house server stacks and legacy applications. 

This creates a digital disconnect. While staff may have access to corporate networks, many of the secure document management and financial processing solutions they need to complete day-to-day operations simply weren’t designed to operate at a distance. Security accounts for part of this separation — regulatory control is critical for banks to ensure client privacy — but many banks have also focused on familiarity over functionality, adopting a “good enough” approach to cumbersome, on-site applications. As a result, firms now face financial frustration across critical workflows, including:

• Consumer Vetting — How do banks effectively evaluate potential client credit histories and financial foundations to deliver tailored service recommendations at a distance? Insecure credit or personal data access could have significant regulatory and legal repercussions.
• Credit Approvals — Necessary credit checks require secure connections and the assurance that data won’t be subject to theft or man-in-the-middle attacks.
• Loan Applications — Bank staff must complete complex forms at a distance and firms must ensure work-from-home employees have the tools they need to handle multiple file formats.
• Account Management — Opening, closing, and modifying account information requires secure access and the ability to share key documents with specific data removed or redacted. Financial data shared outside secure workflows could result in compliance failures.

Solving for Scale

While many big banks are preparing partial return-to-work strategies or ramping up remote work solutions, smaller financial firms don’t have this luxury. The scale of large enterprises affords bigger budgets for IT management and deployment, giving them a deeper pool of resources to pull from when deciding how best to support staff and systems at a distance. From in-house IT teams capable of creating custom-built apps to legacy software solutions that can be updated to work with new collaboration tools, the scale of big banks offers a marked advantage.

For smaller financial firms with the bulk of their workforce already at home and a return to the office unlikely in the near future, fragmentation is the familiar framework. Many SMEs now use multiple document management applications to streamline key processes — but these apps don’t always work well together.

In the office, this doesn’t pose a significant problem — staff might lose time switching between software tools or moving data across digital divides — but at home, access and agility are both restricted. This becomes more complicated thanks to the rise of multi-cloud computing. While purpose-built cloud services empower small banks to keep pace with their enterprise counterparts, they introduce complexity as access points both multiply and diversify.

Driving Digital Dividends

To drive digital dividends at a distance, smaller banks are well-served by the implementation of advanced software development kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs). These tools make it possible to integrate advanced functionality into existing apps without compromising the security of critical banking data. To deliver remote work potential, firms need SDKs capable of:

• Collaboration — Integrate key collaboration functions including in-app document viewing to enhance data security, easy annotation and commenting options to ensure all staff are on the same page for multi-step application or approval processes, and burn-in redaction to enhance the protection of client or corporate data. 
• Conversion — As complex, compliance-heavy processes such as loan applications, credit evaluations, and financial investments move to remote, on-demand models, banks need no-touch data processing that makes it possible to view multiple file types — including familiar Word and Excel files along with more specialized image formats — and convert these files to PDF documents for easy search. 
• Capture — Automated data capture, field recognition, and forms processing not only reduce the amount of time staff spend creating new forms and completing current applications, they also reduce the risk of human error. Enable your team to take complete control of document management functions with powerful character recognition, scanned document cleanup, and form identification — all from within your own application.

The “new normal” for banking relies on digital services. Advanced SDKs and APIs make it possible for firms to succeed over both time and distance by delivering comprehensive collaboration, conversion, and data capture without breaking the bank.

Reconciliation is the process of reviewing digital claims forms before they’re submitted to insurance providers, and it’s a critical step to ensure accuracy, prevent fraud, and reduce overbilling. However, as the amount of digital data increases, the process of reconciliation threatens to overwhelm many insurance organizations.

Matching incoming payments to their source and reconciling the respective account is no easy task. There are tens of millions of policyholders, using various installment options, multiple distribution channels, and different payment methods. 

As a result, insurance agencies are struggling to keep up with the document management required for reconciliation. In fact, recent research has found that just 42 percent of insurers achieve a 90 percent or higher reconciliation rate for matched premium payment receipts. The rest have rates falling somewhere between 50 and 90 percent. 

One reason so many organizations struggle with reconciliations is that traditional document management policies aren’t up to the task. With a lack of automated processes, forms processing and verification can take weeks instead of days, limiting the ability of staff to complete claims files or work on other projects.

And although legacy, paper-based processes for data capture and forms processing haven’t met the efficiency expectations of new digital markets, many organizations remain reluctant to adopt digital solutions for fear of disrupting current processes.

Streamlining the Reconciliation Process

Building a better insurance application with the right integrations is one way that organizations can make drastic improvements to their reconciliation processes. Thankfully, there is a way for organizations to streamline their existing processes without having to build custom applications from scratch. This can be done with the help of next-gen forms processing software development kids (SDKs) that integrate with existing applications to provide accurate optical character recognition (OCR), document cleanup, insurance form automation, and – most importantly – streamlined data entry. 

Adding the ability to capture data from scanned forms enables office staff to process reconciliations faster, while also reducing the incidence of human error due to manual data entry. Using a forms processing SDK, featuring advanced OCR and intelligent algorithms capable of “learning” new patterns over time to improve accuracy, insurance companies can boost process efficiency and capture valuable data for longer-term strategic use.

Additional Benefits for Insurance Teams

Intelligent form automation with forms processing SDK can further reduce the burden on office staff by deploying a combination of intelligent character recognition (ICR) and optical mark recognition (OMR). From checkboxes to handwritten descriptions and typed procedure codes, ICR/OMR capable offerings can both verify accuracy and capture physical data, in turn reducing the amount of claim revisions and rejections.

Furthermore, building an efficient, accurate reconciliation process can provide a distinct competitive advantage to insurance agencies. A 2018 report by McKinsey & Company found that by increasing automation to streamline claims processing,  insurers can drive a 20 percent increase in customer satisfaction scores, as well as a 25 to 30 percent reduction in claim expenses. 

Ultimately, the integration of form processing SDKs into existing applications is one solution that can help insurance agencies streamline their document management processes, enjoy faster and more accurate reconciliations, reduce the burden on office teams, and improve the overall customer experience.

Auto loans reached record high levels in 2019 as high-tech features and low interest boosted buyer interest. For vehicle loan processors, this creates both market opportunity and increased competition. If credit providers can’t keep pace with increasing complexity and evolving consumer expectations, it’s a hard road to revenue. To deliver market-leading lending, companies must tackle car loan automation: volume, variety, and velocity. 

Accounting for Volume

Data volumes are on the rise: 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are now generated every day, and this number is only increasing as connection speeds increase and mobile technology streamlines the process of creating, consuming, and communicating information.

What does this mean for vehicle credit application processors? That loan applications can easily get off track as staff spend time first sourcing the key data from clients and then finding software tools capable of viewing individual assets within their application. Accurate car loan calculation requires everything from credit score data to mortgage information, employment histories, W2s, pay stubs, banking histories, and current vehicle details. But with disparate data sources for each, it’s easy for auto loans to stall out.

Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer streamlines the process. This HTML5 document viewer lets users view, convert, and annotate dozens of file types directly from your loan application software. The embedded functionality means you don’t need to download special tools or add another step to your car loan process.

Adapting to Variety

Data variety is also on the rise. For example, digital pay stubs now come in multiple formats including XLS or PDF, and potential clients may also send them as JPG or TIFF images. Word documents remain common for basic loan agreements and eSignatures, while many loan processors still require applicants to fill out forms by hand. 

The result? Loan providers need a way to consolidate this data and produce information-rich templates without wasting customer time or increasing IT complexity. ImageGear for .NET, C/C++, or Java easily integrates with existing applications and makes it possible to convert multiple document types into a single PDF. Even better, ImageGear’s OCR add-on empowers users to quickly search for and identify data within PDFs.

Automating Velocity

Speed matters, but with the volume and variety of data increasing, it’s easy for credit processors to go down under the deluge. Plus, with consumer choice increasing, clients aren’t willing to wait on slow loan processors. As noted by PWC, “A fast end-to-end application process is the largest differentiator in auto loan financing.” If buyers can get loan approval from the competition in 48 hours when you take a week, your sales won’t leave the starting line.

FormSuite for Structured Forms makes it easy for users to identity structured forms from predefined templates. This enables users to quickly capture data from forms. This embeddable SDK helps your financial application capture key data fields, enabling your developers to build a custom route for this information to secure databases. 

In addition, solutions like OnTask empower your team to create feature-rich forms at scale. Key data fields can be auto-populated with customized client information to reduce error rates, clients can complete remaining fields online, staff can make track the progress of form completion, and all parties can provide verified digital signatures to align processing speed with consumer expectations.

The auto loans market is changing as data volume, variety, and velocity increase. Tackle car loan processes and deliver on-demand automation with PrizmDoc Viewer, ImageGear, OnTask, and FormSuite.

Forms are a part of every industry. It’s just a part of business, but have you taken stock of all of the forms-based transactions which flow through your bank? Customer-centric forms for new accounts, mortgages, and car loans are just the tip of the iceberg. There are also intra-bank forms for expenses, audit compliance, and HR workflows. 

Many of these forms are still filled in manually with pen and ink, then received via mail, fax, email, or handed across office desks. Extracting data from the forms and entering it into a database can be time consuming and prone to human error. This may not seem like a great problem until the forms multiply. 

Banks process hundreds if not thousands of forms per week, and employees often do this by hand. Errors can grow more problematic and costly with the myriad of forms they have to sort through.  Many banks have addressed paper and electronic form processing for use within their offices, yet digital transformation priorities are evolving to reduce the amount of printing and paper shuffling happening within banks. 

Extending Document and Form Processing Beyond Bank Walls

Document viewing and processing SDKs empower your employees to process forms faster and capture data effectively. FormSuite for Structured Forms enables users to work with forms like business loan applications.   

When a financial application integrates a forms processing tool, credit and loan management applications are streamlined and transactions are more convenient for customers. Having this functionality can speed the flow of approvals through banks faster and enable branch employees to become more attentive to customers without being bogged down by paperwork. Consider the time savings of processing forms with automated form field detection. When you need all the data in a standard form, you can capture the physical pages with a scanner and automate the data capture. 

Maintaining Secure and Compliant Transaction Lifecycles

With complex processes like business loans, forms are a large part of the process. The initial application process requires a lot of information about the business owner applying, the company’s financial history, and more. With secure forms processing integrated into your banking application, collecting this data for processing is easy.

In addition, SDKs like ImageGear can help consolidate different file types into a single PDF for easy record keeping and mortgage approvals. Mortgages require a myriad of information which could include everything from W2s, tax records, and pay stubs to a client’s grades in college and resume if they qualify for new home buyer government assistance.

Data is essential in banking. Whether it’s a client applying for a credit card, a business requesting a loan, or a family requesting a mortgage, forms are a part of a bank’s daily routine. With an automated forms processing tool, you can easily recognize form fields like the customer’s name, address, loan number, social security number, and more.  

Once the data is captured, you can code a connection to your database to store the information. Discover how you can streamline loan processing, accelerate new account creation, and improve customer satisfaction with this integration. Download your free trial of FormSuite for Structured Forms today.

If your development team is building a data-rich application which will ingest gigabytes of data from newly-converted forms and born-digital ones, a cloud-based forms automation API can minimize development cost and effort. These days, forms are increasingly populated on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets as opposed to desktop browsers. 

Imagine if your clients, patients, employees, or constituents could fill out structured paper forms, then scan and submit them for processing. FormSuite in the Cloud helps your business reap the benefits of:

1. Hassle-free scanning followed by image capture and cleanup. 
2. Seamless identification of multiple form types.
3. Fast, accurate extraction of handwritten and typed data inputs. 

Custom development of this sort of functionality into your business application can add significant scope to the initial build and help you bypass those manual, incremental upgrades. Even if you are already experiencing the benefits of the Accusoft server-based FormSuite for Structured Forms or FormSuite for Invoices for your legacy applications, the increased flexibility of the FormSuite Cloud Beta is worth investigating.

Use Cases for Cloud-Based Form Capture

There are several scenarios for different industry use cases where cloud-enabled forms automation could create efficiency and reduce cost.

Insurance: Are clients applying for coverage by filling out paper forms? Claims for health expenses, property damage, or car accidents are all handled through your user-facing application.

Legal: How do attorneys capture retainer forms or engagement letters? Whether your law firm specializes in real estate, corporate mergers and acquisitions, or criminal matters,  processing the various forms involved in case files is a tedious manual task. 

Government: Permit applications, census forms, tax forms, invoices, and business registration forms are a few examples of documents which often start out as paper documents, but are best stored and processed electronically. Extracting personally identifiable information (PII) from forms and storing data in secure systems mitigates the risk of compromising sensitive data.

Finance: Applications for mortgages, business loans, 401Ks, and other investments often starts with a physical form. The data within these forms often changes after the initial signature ink dries. Pulling accurate data out of these forms in a timely manner is critical. 

A Cloud-Based Forms Solution for All

Whatever industry your business applications serve, it’s quite likely that much of the data which they store will come from a form. Coding your own forms capture functionality into your application adds cost and complexity to development lifecycles. That is entirely avoidable. 

Accusoft has been preparing a cloud-based version of our proven FormSuite SDK. A Beta API is now available for a test-drive. Explore how you can extend your business applications by recognizing key form fields and capturing the data that resides there. Sign up for to test our FormSuite Cloud Beta today. 

The robot revolution has arrived. It’s not Terminator’s terrifying Skynet, nor is it the mostly-benevolent mechanical men of Asimov’s near-future. According to research firm Gartner, it’s actually something much simpler: robotic process automation (RPA). Now outpacing all other enterprise software markets, RPA saw 63 percent growth in 2018 and is on track for 1.3 billion in revenue this year.

This quiet revolution does have its detractors. As noted by Tech Radar, managers and staff often worry that RPA will replace flesh-and-blood workers, making enterprise processes more helpful but less human. But the real benefit of RPA comes from meeting the middle: People are terrible at repetitive, manual tasks such as data entry, while robots excel. Humans want answers, while machines thrive on process. The result? There’s an entry-level job just waiting for RPA in the enterprise, forms processing.

Who Needs Manual?

Companies are losing time with manual processes, and as Financial Director writes, it’s not a small amount of time, either. Recent survey data found that 26 percent of employee work days are wasted on “administrative chores, unnecessary tasks, and outdated ways of working.” More specifically, 26 minutes every day are “devoted to outdated technology tasks.”

For most enterprises these numbers aren’t surprising, but the sheer volume and complexity of legacy-driven manual processes makes it difficult to implement new digital initiatives without causing more problems than they solve.

Enter RPA. As Tech Crunch points out, one key benefit of robotics-driven processes is that they play well with existing legacy systems, allowing organizations to layer on additional functionality without impacting current outcomes. This is especially beneficial for processes that require consistently high levels of detail and must be performed again, and again, and again — often at speed.

Consider forms processing. From insurance firms to healthcare providers, law offices and financial institutions, forms are critical to effective service delivery, liability mitigation, and necessary chain-of-ownership in the event of an audit or evaluation. But the sheer quantity and type of forms handled by organizations creates its own set of problems. Writing new documents, capturing data, searching for information, and processing results can quickly overwhelm front-line staff and leave little time for business innovation.

Forms and Function

It’s one thing to articulate the high-level benefits of RPA. It’s another to justify implementing them at scale. Just like cloud computing or big data analytics, organizations must prioritize business function and measurable benefits over technological wizardry. The good news? Forms processing with RPA offers objective advantages including:

• • Data Capture

    In a perfect world, customers (correctly) enter data using electronic forms in a single, unified format. In reality, enterprises deal with multiple file types, handwritten data fields, and incomplete forms every day. RPA streamlines the process of manual forms processing by enabling automation with data capture using a forms processing toolkit and a routing automation software.

  • OCR Information Search

    Optical character recognition (OCR) tools help companies search for information that may not be immediately obvious. Paired with RPA, OCR permits straightforward data searches to quickly find key information.

  • Forms Completion

    Once data is captured and forms are vetted, RPA solutions can help ensure they’re properly filed and placed in the appropriate queue for human-staff handling.

We Can Start Monday

Robotic process automation isn’t coming for enterprise jobs. Instead, it offers a way to leverage legacy tools without the cost and risk associated with complete digital transition. Even better? These robots require minimal onboarding, virtually no oversight, and are entirely reliable — and yes, they can start Monday.

The insurance industry continues to rebound. As noted by a recent Deloitte report, positive economic factors in 2018 are “setting the stage for enhanced top and bottom-line growth in the year ahead.” With steady growth, comes growing pains. While 70 percent of insurance CEOs now rely on operational efficiency to drive growth, 31 percent remain “extremely concerned” about the speed of technological change.

This creates a paradox. Legacy, paper-based processes for data capture and forms processing can’t meet the efficiency expectations of new digital markets, but organizations are often reluctant to adopt digital solutions for fear of disrupting current processes. The solution? Advanced software development kits (SDKs) that integrate with existing applications to streamline forms processing and data capture.

Forms Processing Solutions

Forms are fundamental. With a variety of different claims processed by big and small insurance agencies alike, many forms are similar, if not the same. However, many insurance agencies struggle with efficient claims processing. As noted by the PWC Top Issues Annual Report for 2019 , “clunkiness and redundancy” are common. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Redundancy (of forms) can offer an avenue for “quick wins” when paired with the right forms processing and automation technology.

FormSuite for Structured Forms, Accusoft’s forms processing SDK, integrates into your insurance application and provides out-of-the-box functionality to capture everything from phone number fields to hand-printed text, marks, and signatures. Enable your team with common forms using the toolkit’s library to identify recurring form types. Combined with advanced optical character recognition, FormSuite for Structured Forms automates the process of form identification, alignment, and data capture to quickly provide quantifiable process value.

Data Capture & Review

Whether it’s communicating or collaborating with internal or external stakeholders, insuretech users need a way to securely share certificates of insurance and declaration pages with invested parties. By helping to identify the gaps where individuals may be over or underinsured, underwriters can identify where potential opportunities are available. If the individual is under insured, this means that an agent could upsell a policy, bundle a package, or restructure their limits.

That’s just the beginning. As noted by a recent McKinsey & Company report, insurance companies are now looking to leverage data capture and analysis to both enhance existing business models and fundamentally change consumer relationships. What does this mean in practice? Insurance companies need a streamlined way to view and collaborate on documents, forms, and spreadsheets. With a lack of automated processes, forms processing and verification can take weeks instead of days, limiting the ability of staff to complete projects. Using Accusoft’s forms processing SDK, featuring advanced OCR and intelligent algorithms capable of “learning” new patterns over time to improve accuracy, insurance companies can boost process efficiency and capture valuable data for longer-term strategic use.

Forms Processing and Data Capture Integrations

Insurance markets are strengthening. Executives are looking for ways to maximize process efficiency as underwriting and invoicing demands increase, even as compliance rules and regulations expand to protect client interests.

The result? Legacy forms processing and data capture tools may meet current needs, but fall short of emerging digital expectations. Our FormSuite for Structured Forms  solution makes it possible to bridge the gap between existing tools and emerging expectations with easy integration, available source code, and powerful customization. Claim your process potential. Schedule a FormSuite demo and discover the Accusoft advantage.