Meeting Regulatory Standards For Compliance - Seven Tips to Help Insurers Guarantee Effective ECM

As an insurer, you probably recognize the value of digital storage and workflow automation for business. Not only does it accelerate processing speeds and improve service; it makes the burden of regulatory compliance significantly easier. In order to meet regulatory standards, efficient data collection across the enterprise is critical. You need to be able to use that data when and where it is needed.

From HIPAA and Sarbanes Oxley to market conduct examinations, regulatory issues such as Solvency II, and more, mounting regulations continue to dictate the way we store information and conduct everyday business. Establishing clear policies that respond promptly to regulatory changes and implementing them effectively helps you to protect your leaders and your company. Still, you need immediate, thorough, and accurate audit trails to demonstrate your commitment to the policies you create.

The time-consuming measures you have to put in place to respond to increasing regulations can be frustrating, but they aren't avoidable. The regulations are not going to disappear; in the wake of numerous recent financial scandals and the ensuing economic crisis, they are expected to proliferate. The sooner you get a handle on your information, the better equipped you will be to survive public and private scrutiny from government, compliance officers, and auditors.

Here are a few tips to help you stay afloat in the turbulent sea of changing regulations:

Create a central repository for all of your information. Although digital capture and storage improves data quality and makes data access easier, faster, and more secure, 'going digital' alone is not enough. Electronic files should be stored in a single, central electronic document management (EDM) repository, or that repository should point to the location of files that are stored in multiple systems. This enables centralized queries and searches, rather than probing through multiple digital data silos when you need information quickly. It gives you and your auditors instant, detailed insight into your business transaction details.

Configure your document management system to restrict access to information in accordance with regulations and your internal policies. Make sure your system has the flexibility to let you define and limit access by business unit, department, a person's role or position, and individual. Make sure it can also prohibit access to specific pages within routine documents that contain sensitive information.

Take into consideration the enterprise-wide needs for the data within your documents that you weren't originally planning to catalog as you create a file indexing plan. The data may be vital to another department's or individual's process. Understand how people with diverse job functions search for information so you can make it quick and easy for them to find it when it's needed. Make sure any data they need to find from the files is included in your indexing plan. Making changes in the indexing scheme later in order to correct current oversights is very costly.

Take care that your enterprise search application fully integrates with your electronic storage repository. This helps you to guarantee a complete return of requested files and data. Otherwise, you may encounter errors and omissions as a result of poor interoperability between your document management repository and the search tools you use.

Choose an enterprise search application that lets you access data in structured forms and files as well as unstructured data stored in your repository, such as data stored in handwritten correspondence or emails. Comprehensive search will save you and your staff considerable time, and you will rest easier knowing that your queries aren't overlooking anything.

Make sure your system provides clear, structured data in an auditable format that will meet the needs of auditors and compliance officers. Electronic queries should provide details of all file access and business transactions involving digital media. This makes it easier to prove compliance with the information governance policies you establish and communicate.