South Western

Case Studies

The following brief case studies illustrate our capacity to deliver high-quality and cost-effective solutions for our clients across a range of business sectors; they include:

• Managing a closed loan book for a financial institution
• Conducting customer satisfaction surveys and data cleansing for a leading international bank
• Developing and implementing an animal passport system for the Irish Department of Agriculture & Food
• Managing a claims processing service for a large insurance organisation.

Financial Services Sector

Closed Loan Book Administration

Our client took on a closed mortgage book from a mortgage provider who was exiting the Irish mortgage market. SouthWestern was engaged to provide a range of services relating to the administration of the loan book. To do this, we developed a bespoke application and captured all data associated with the mortgages. The tasks for which we are responsible include:

• Processing of all monthly payments
• Arrears handling, including
  • Re-running unpaid direct debits once a month
  • Generating of arrears letters
  • Following up arrears letters, as well as handling incoming queries
  • Setting up agreed payment plans with mortgage holders that have fallen into arrears
• Ensuring compliance with mortgage tax relief as prescribed by the Revenue Commissioners and applying to the Revenue Commissioners for reimbursement of same
• Making monthly submissions to the Irish Credit Bureau on the mortgage holders’ credit status
• Performing interest calculations, including:
  • Recalculating interest for each customer monthly
  • Recalculating interest when an individual customer’s interest rate is changed, or where the loan type or loan duration is changed
• Generating statements for mortgage holders, including mid-year statements and annual statements of transactions and certificates of interest paid
• Reconciling payments received against our client company’s bank statement to ensure that all appropriate transactions are captured and processed by our application
• Tracking insurance policies to ensure that appropriate cover is in place for each loan at all times
• Providing legal services, including:
  • Responding to information requests from our clients and their solicitors
  • Preparing case files for solicitors
  • Closing out mortgages where properties have been repossessed by our client

Banking Sector

International Bank

One of our leading financial services clients engaged us to conduct detailed customer satisfaction surveys across all their business units and geographic locations. We developed the survey scripts in consultation with our client and then ran the survey across the client’s 160,000 customers. To do this effectively, we developed our own computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CAT I) solution.

This has the ability to manage complex market segmentations and efficiently record survey data across these segments, while allowing our trained agents to move easily from one customer segment to another. As part of the process all customer data is cleaned up for specific information sets.

SouthWestern’s engagement has brought substantial benefits to the client:

• The research model now in place is much faster, more flexible and more cost-effective.
• The information gathered from the surveying process provides very valuable insights into the client’s customer base.
• Significant process improvements have been identified and implemented.

In parallel with the customer surveying, we provided our client with a mystery shopping service in some of its branches and business units, and the outputs from this activity have also been very useful to the client in its ongoing customer service enhancement.
 

Government Sector

Department of Agriculture and Food

The BSE and foot-and-mouth disease crises of recent years led to a greater awareness of the importance of food safety and traceability. The Department of Agriculture & Food now requires cattle to have individual passports that enable their movements to be traced from birth. SouthWestern manages the animal passports process on behalf of the Department of Agriculture & Food. This involves:

• Processing over 40,000 animal registrations per day during peak periods, and over two million records annually.
• Guaranteeing a three-day maximum turnaround to those registering animals.
• Managing an archive of over 40 million documents.

We built our systems initially in close consultation with the Department of Agriculture & Food and we have gone on to develop further enhancements necessary to deliver an efficient process that is an essential element of food traceability process. In particular, the systems meet very strict requirements regarding processing and archiving, and all records both, physical and electronic, are archived by SouthWestern.

Insurance sector

Claims Processing
 

Since 2004, SouthWestern has been central to the processing of personal injury claims in Ireland. This is an activity of considerable scale, and our work includes:

• Handling calls (100,000 calls a year) from claimants, respondents and the general public.
• Preparing claims for assessment (27,000 claims a year).
• Scanning of all documents received (500,000 records a year).

We use a case management system to manage the entire paper flow and all correspondence and other communications relating to claims for our client. We also provide the client with detailed management information, and provide validation of claim information to both claimants and respondents. All paper records are archived in a secure environment.

The claims processing system has been an acknowledged success, and awards are now delivered in a quarter of the time at a quarter of the price, with savings to the economy to date of up to €250 million. The management of correspondence in a single location has also brought considerable benefits.

The claims processing scheme has also been very popular with its users, and an independent survey of the service found that:

• Overall claimant satisfaction was at 96 per cent
• Of those surveyed, 92 per cent stated that
• SouthWestern staff were knowledgeable and informed on claimants’ options (92 per cent)
• Direct claimants believed that staff communicated a clear understanding of the process and its requirements (88 per cent).