Abstract
In 2019, Blue Cross of Idaho became a customer for Gain’s Notes solution. Based on the efficiencies realized, the company expanded to Gain’s Full Statement solution in 2021. In this Customer Story, you will learn how the removal of manual processes led to significant time savings and a marked improvement in the work experience for the financial reporting team.
Key Quotes
“Gain Compliance’s software and capabilities have saved our team at least 50% of the time we were spending on our statements previously with our old platform.”
“In insurance, some of the tools we use can be antiquated. Gain is very user friendly and up to date. I don’t know of any other software we use that is so self-explanatory and has such an intuitive interface.”
Kirstin Anderson, Finance Supervisor, Blue Cross of Idaho
Background: The Challenges of the Notes
Kirstin Anderson started working on the company’s filings in 2014. At the time, the team was using FIS to complete their statutory financial reporting. Relying on Microsoft Word to draft and review their Notes, they faced the challenges of integrating text narrative alongside numerical data, presented in tables, within a rigid, prescribed framework.
All of this was made even more complicated by changing requirements and guidance promulgated by the NAIC.
“Changes to the financial statement footnotes that the NAIC made quarterly were not updated in FIS software. We would manually look up the changes and incorporate them into our Word footnote file,” she recalled. “The instructions were not a click away in FIS as they are in Gain. We would receive a paper copy of the instructions, scan them in, and manually bookmark the PDF. Then we would review for changes and update the Word file we used to import the footnotes with noted changes. In Gain the footnotes are already updated and formatted quarterly with any NAIC changes.”
Added to this was the requirement to enter the Electronic Note Data into FIS and keep that data in sync with the Word footnote document. “There were a lot of manual processes that took time away from reviewing the final output, more time was spent making sure we didn’t miss any inputs. In Gain there is no separate entry into the Electronic Note Data.”
The financial reporting team included one individual focused solely on the financial statement footnote process, and, since it was difficult to collaborate on the footnotes in the Microsoft Office Suite, this part of the filing became siloed. The arrangement was inefficient, Kirstin recalled, “and we had no indication as to when each footnote was completed. In Gain, we can mark each note with color coding to indicate where it is at in the process, such as in process, in review, complete, etc. All users have visibility to where each schedule and footnote is in the process of completion.”
Other Limitations of Legacy Technology
Statement validation (crosscheck errors) was also a solo job. FIS’s product included a restriction that only a single user could be active in the system during the validation process. As one user iteratively modified values and re-ran the validation report, the rest of the team sat on the sidelines – disrupting and delaying progress.
Kirstin recounted: “This process involved kicking everyone out of the system to fix the validation error. Inevitably, [the initial] fix would not work out as planned, so we would have to redo the steps and revalidate. After that, a message was sent out that it was clear for everyone to go back into FIS and continue. It took up a lot of time. In Gain, the validations run in real time and they’re always current. Everyone can remain in the system and continue to work when anyone runs validations.”
There were various other challenges that demanded manual, sometimes complicated workflows. “Getting the data in there because FIS was so antiquated was a pain,” Kirstein recounted. As an older software product, FIS required updates which had to be installed regularly. This necessitated outside assistance. As Kirstin recalled: “Oh yeah, IT was definitely involved; they had to go around to each of us to set up our machines.”
These manual tasks added up. Additional time was required to coordinate and manage steps that disappear with a modern software solution.
All Together Now
Kirstin was pleasantly surprised by how immediately Blue Cross of Idaho realized efficiencies upon moving to Gain.
“The onboarding process – people are worried about that process – but I handed over our previous filings and it was all done for us… Since we had all that prior information set up in Gain, we didn’t have any need to go back to the old software.”
With that pristine starting point set, Kirstin and the team felt 100% confident and supported from that moment forward: “The other thing I noticed in that process was the people we were working with at Gain didn’t just know the system, they know the insurance accounting rules. They help in other ways beyond ‘I can’t get this value to pull through to this statement.’ It seemed they all had that accounting policy background.”
The manual work of researching changing NAIC guidance disappeared. “If you have a question about the guidance, you just click this button and it takes you right to the exact spot in the instructions. You don’t have to search for it, the information is just right there.”
Using Gain, the team was able to work together in a much more productive manner. Instead of a single gatekeeper for the footnotes, tasks are completed by those best positioned to contribute. “Now we all do the footnotes that pertain to the parts of the filing that we individually work on,” Kirstin explained.
Further, by using the outline status labels in the application, collaboration became standard practice. “Now we use the color coding in Gain. I turn it to orange when it’s ready to review, our reviewer turns it to purple when she’s done, and, when it’s green, we are ready to file. We don’t have to communicate verbally around our Notes, we can just communicate through that system and know exactly where we are.”
Kirstin enjoys the greatly improved visibility into the team’s progress across the schedules as well. “I look at validation errors when I know they can be looked at. If there is an error because a validation is not in sync with a particular schedule, I can clearly see, for example, it is because that particular schedule hasn’t been completed yet.”
The team leveraged Gain’s solutions in ways that had been impossible in FIS. Kirstin cited the Cash Flow Worksheet as an example: “We never used that in FIS. We could never figure it out. When we moved to Gain, I was leery of using it, but the first time we used it we figured it out in about an hour, and that’s what we use today.”
And the team no longer has to wait on the sidelines while validations are run and fixed. “The other nice thing: when you do validations, you don’t have to kick people out of the system,” she said. “They run in real time and they’re always current.”
Gain as a Partner
Kirstin found that Gain has actively sought and incorporated customer feedback. Kirstin recalled: “One time, I mistakenly entered a value into the wrong line of the Exhibit of Premiums, Enrollment and Utilization schedule, and our state insurance department asked, ‘Why did this line go from millions to zero?’ We asked Gain about adding a crosscheck to validate that if a company indicates they are a health entity and there’s something on the life insurance line on the Exhibit of Premiums, Enrollment and Utilization, the system will flag it. Gain implemented this for us, so we will never inadvertently make this mistake again.”
She continued, “Really, any crosscheck request we’ve asked for has been implemented. Any updates to the system that we’ve requested, like locking down schedules when they’re done so that changes can’t be made after review, and adding role-based permissions, we have seen those requests implemented.”
Gain’s continuous improvement around validations has provided additional time savings. “For us, the validations have removed a review step. It’s cut down on our review time because the system is taking care of a lot of that behind the scenes for us.”
An Added Bonus – Gain for New Team Members
Kirstin noted that Gain’s modern and intuitive interface has allowed them to bring new people into the process that weren’t involved previously. “We have people on the team who never utilized this software prior to the team moving to Gain, that just recently started using the software,” she said.
Because the Gain customer service rep provides training for no fee to any new users, these new team members were able to step in and contribute quickly. “The instinctive nature of the software allows for new users to learn quickly. For example, when you are on a schedule, the software automatically highlights what is validated in green and what requires attention in red, orange, or yellow. Gain also has a sidebar that shows users immediately where to look for any discrepancies in the data,” Kirstin explained. “It is helpful, especially for the new people in the software to see, ‘this data is pulling from this schedule and this is what the calculation is computing.'”
The questions these new people had were less about the software and more about the details of their filing. “The time spent with them was more dedicated to how we organize the schedules before bringing them into Gain, and then guiding them through how the schedules are presented in the software.”
Looking back, adding new people would have been difficult in the software they used in the past. “When I started in FIS, it took me forever to figure out the program, where to put things, how to run it, when it’s updated, when it’s not,” she recalled.
“In insurance, everything we use just seems kind of antiquated. With Gain, it’s just very user friendly and up to date. I don’t know of any other software we use that just feels so current. ”
Conclusion
Statutory reporting teams have been building manual workflows around legacy Annual Statement software for years. These workflows become time-consuming routines that are simply accepted as part of the process.
As modern software for the Annual Statement, Gain Compliance has provided perspective on these routines. By providing a more collaborative platform, our customers are able to streamline their processes around these statements.
Learn more about how Gain has improved outcomes for financial reporting teams for other carriers.