Pensions specialist James Hay deploys document sorting system

Self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) specialist James Hay Partnership has deployed a document classification application to help it sort the 6,000 letters it receives a week from clients and financial services advisors.

Speaking to CIO UK, James Hay CIO Iain Tait explained that the business is targeted at high-net-worth individuals who use SIPP to invest in a wide variety of financial products.

The company has 45,000 clients and administer £14bn of assets. Consequentlty the volume of mail that goes through the company is high.

The document and entity recognition and routing system, Kofax KTM deployed by Capital Capture, scans mail, learns to identify certain document types from a variety of financial services entities, such as fund managers, IFAs or property managers, and automatically routes them to the most appropriate James Hay account executives.

“The system solves the complex problem of routing an incredible diverse mailbox, to a very complex organisational structure,” Tait said.

“Previously, documents could pass through as many as six pairs of hands electronically before they reached their destination. With this application, 80 per cent of post is delivered to the right person without going through this process.”

Tait explained that a mergers and acquisition strategy for growth has left James Hay with a multi-region back-office supporting five different databases.

Part of the deployment entailed the construction of a central database through which the sorting application could distribute documents throughout the whole company.

He said the system has saved manpower resources equivalent to nine full-time staff. This resource has been redeployed within the company to focus on other business activities.