Pensions specialist James Hay deploys document sorting system

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

Speaking to Computerworld UK's sister title CIO UK, James Hay CIO Iain Tate explained that the business is targeted at high-net-worth individuals who use SIPs to invest in a wide variety of financial products.

The company has 45,000 clients and administers £14bn of assets. Consequently, the amount of email traffic that goes through the company is high.

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

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.