CATIC is one of the largest title insurance companies in the United States. The organization has been a trusted resource for policy-issuing attorneys, insured lenders and homebuyers, and other members of the real estate community for over 50 years.

The organization offers a number of services, including underwriting consultation, title information products, legislative and case law reporting, release tracking, flood compliance and more. CATIC’s approach is one of continuous improvement, constantly looking to improve efficiency in operations to maintain its strong reputation for high-quality service.

Using continuous improvement methodologies and the Laserfiche content services platform, CATIC has digitally transformed many of its processes.

Benefits include:

Like many organizations, CATIC previously relied on manual, paper-heavy processes. Unsatisfied with the status quo, CATIC Senior Operations Analyst Chris Cooper had a vision to optimize the way the organization managed information. He and his team sought out a platform that would support more efficient, automated processes.

This search led to Laserfiche, which satisfied CATIC’s requirements for a system to centralize content and support information governance — while opening doors to workflow automation, which wasn’t available with the legacy system. Following continuous improvement practices, Cooper saw the opportunity to improve:

CATIC partnered with Laserfiche solution provider Accelerated Information Systems (AIS) to implement Laserfiche — starting with migrating content from the organization’s legacy system.

The first workflow the CATIC and AIS teams automated was for the company’s CATICTrac service, which tracks, obtains and records the appropriate documents needed to clear liens. The automated process eliminates the need for clients to submit paper forms, which can be cumbersome, error-prone and lead to delays. Instead, clients submit an electronic Laserfiche form, which automatically routes information to the appropriate personnel for review and approval.

After the initial success with CATICTrac, Cooper and his team expanded the use of Laserfiche into other areas of the business, including records management, claims and compliance.

Digitizing records and automating records management processes was an impactful initiative that had a profound effect across the enterprise. By centralizing content in Laserfiche, CATIC created a robust information backbone for the organization that is searchable and accessible, while maintaining the granular access controls needed to support information governance. When policies are filed, they are now immediately available for processing, rather than the next morning as was with the legacy system.

This also streamlined the policy request process when stakeholders needed to pull policies, for example for finance to recognize revenue; if a claim was ever filed against the policy; or if a modification needed to be made to the policy. Requests to pull policies previously resulted in wait times of around 11 days, which have been shortened to six. The first-time quality of information pulled has also increased by more than 10%. Finally, the entire initiative has simplified activities for stakeholders, who pull an average of 150,000 policies per year.

In claims, the goal was to simplify and standardize the process, cutting down wait and processing times while increasing the quality and capacity for claims. Using Laserfiche, Cooper automated the process and reduced the number of steps to process a claim from 27 down to 11. The processing time for a claim is now 50% more efficient, with a 5% boost in, first time quality. The elimination of paper in the process also saved CATIC over $25,500 per year.

CATIC isn’t stopping there, however, and is currently pursuing an integration between legal management solution CounselLink and Laserfiche that will make the process even more efficient. Today, claims are filed through Laserfiche Forms, which allows claimants to input necessary information and upload supporting documents. Laserfiche then sends the supporting documents to CounselLink. “Phase two is about eliminating keystrokes,” Cooper said. “With the integration, all of the data entry that claimants are putting on the notice of claim form will be pushed into CounselLink, because paralegals are currently rekeying that data.”   

Cooper’s continuous improvement approach has been embraced internally, too, within the compliance department. Each year, employees must acknowledge that have read and agree follow company codes and policies, which is now done through a Laserfiche form.

“We launch this project every year, and every year we make changes,” Cooper said. “This is probably the most picture-perfect example of continuous improvement. Every year it gets more and more efficient.”

The previously paper-driven, manual process would take about 60 days, while today it takes just 15. The Laserfiche form has cut down the amount of time employees need to spend with the document, making it 90% more efficient.

As a result of these systematic improvements, CATIC saves over $325,000 annually, while also supporting information governance and compliance practices and policies and enhancing the customer and employee experience.

Cooper continues to make updates to existing processes and find new areas to improve efficiency and productivity across the organization. “With new Laserfiche processes, as more work comes in the door, we now have the ability to increase units completed or throughput,” Cooper said. “And the whole industry has moved toward focusing on profitability per unit. So, we’re able to also facilitate growth without having to hire more staff.”

Cooper is also working to use Laserfiche’s robotic process automation capabilities to sync information from an FTP site daily so he doesn’t have to do it manually. “The bot is like a personal assistant,” he added.

“Laserfiche is something I felt that I could be great at, but also could help me to help others be great,” Cooper said. “I see that as a powerful tool. I enjoy making processes better and I feel Laserfiche is the most powerful thing I’ve encountered, where I could achieve my own personal goal of helping others achieve their goals.”

The credit union model is based around the needs of members, and providing personalized service that retains and grows the membership base. Recent years have brought on a number of factors — such as economic and technological disruption — that have resulted in major changes to members’ needs and expectations.

Luminus Financial, a credit union headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, with over 6,000 members, has navigated the vicissitudes with its members as its north star. With a membership that expects more digital offerings, the credit union is strategically innovating its operations, incorporating technology and business process automation across the organization.

“Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, we were already planning to lower our physical square footage in Ontario — becoming more virtual is in our roadmap,” said Adam Kirilo, vice president, operations and finance at Luminus Financial. “Laserfiche helps fulfill those needs with backend work and helps staff complete transactions that were historically done in person. We’re doing it much more easily in a more virtual environment today.”

A merger with another financial institution in 2015 sparked the need for an electronic records management system that would digitize all member documentation. Since then, the Luminus team has uncovered new efficiencies from having Laserfiche as its system of record, as well as building multiple automated workflows to support the increasingly virtual environment.

“As a credit union, we have lots of documentation for each of our members,” Kirilo said. “A typical long-term member can have upwards of 10,000 pages dedicated to them due to mortgages, loans or new accounts — and each type of document has a different retention obligation. From the get-go, our goal has been to get all of that documentation digitized and easily searchable, to make our staff’s jobs easier and so we can be more efficient in serving our members.”

That vision for digitization extended beyond going paperless, however. The Luminus IT team, working with Laserfiche solution provider Document Direction, also aimed to transform manual processes with Laserfiche — seeking to eliminate cumbersome, repetitive tasks through automation.

Member onboarding was an obvious target, as the process requires:

In Luminus Financial’s member onboarding solution, credit union employees gather the necessary member information and input it into a Laserfiche form, which is routed to another employee to review before the PDF is sent to the member for signature through DocuSign. The signed document comes back to Luminus and is automatically filed into the organization’s repository as well as into the core banking system.

“Laserfiche has revolutionized our ability to manage documentation and processes,” said Kirilo. “We have uncovered significant new efficiencies and reclaimed time from dealing with inconsistent information and manual processes.”

The team built on this success by automating the wire transfer request process, which has similar requirements.

“Wire transfers — specifically the instructions for them — can be very complicated, because a lot of them come from different countries from around the world,” said Tyler Ferris, manager, accounting and business intelligence at Luminus Financial. “For that reason, our staff collects the documents from the member up front and enters the necessary information into a Laserfiche form.”

Once the form is submitted, a PDF is generated and sent for signature before Laserfiche routes the document through the wire processing department. “Those employees get a Laserfiche Forms task saying that there’s a new wire transfer,” Ferris described. “They are able to see certain details, view the signed form in the repository, and once they process the wire transfer, they get a PDF receipt which they upload to the Laserfiche form. All information is kept together in the repository in the member’s folder, with the relevant metadata applied.”

“For wire transfers, for instance, sometimes our compliance team will need to review transfers over a certain dollar threshold,” Ferris said. “They can easily search between specific dates, for amounts or between amounts — all based off the wire transfer metadata.

“Audits are easy to administer for us; we don’t have to move documents to a different system,” he added. “It depends on the audit and who is conducting it, but we can provide a login to a repository that does not contain our members’ personal information, and revoke access when the audit is over. Or we’ve also done audits where we collect all the documents needed in a folder and upload them through a secure portal of a third party as required.”

The Luminus Financial team has seen a lot of success optimizing processes across the organization, including completely back-office processes that simply make everyday tasks a lot easier to manage. One such process that which allows board members to vote on motions virtually — a result of in-person board meetings coming to a halt during the pandemic. Executive management members can upload a document, send it out to the board for approval or for a vote, and then each board member can log into Laserfiche Forms and submit their vote.

The process, which used to be done via email, was cumbersome and lacking in standardization. “We wanted to automate it so we’d be able to provide a list every month, make sure motions were approved or voted on, and also put in the minutes for the meeting,” Kirilo said. “Also, the system needed to be able to retain that record in a secure manner, rather than sending it through email.”

The breadth of processes the team has been able to automate is also a testament to the usability of Laserfiche: “It’s very low-code,” Ferris said. “I picked it up very easily. Laserfiche provides great documentation and resources, and it’s easy to learn, especially when you understand how your organization’s data flows and where it needs to go.”

Today, every Luminus employee touches Laserfiche daily in some capacity, including:

The team’s digitization and automation efforts have laid a strong foundation for upcoming initiatives. Looking into the future, the credit union aims to create an omnichannel experience for members that continues to deliver high quality services in an efficient matter, no matter what channel through which a member prefers to interact with the organization.

Rehmann’s wealth management practice must coordinate a lot of moving parts across its offices in Michigan, Ohio and Florida. In addition to advisory services, the firm operates as a broker-dealer, a role which greatly expands its compliance obligations. Coordinating workflows across those services to ensure advisors across branches follow rules around conflicts of interest and suitability is only half the battle. Having documentation readily available to prove compliance adds another layer of complexity.

In Laserfiche Forms, the firm has found a flexible tool capable of streamlining data collection and reporting, as well as shaping the design of workflows in ways that make them less prone to human error and easier to audit. “Our biggest challenge with Laserfiche Forms tends to be keeping up with demand for new ones,” said Amy Flourry, Rehmann Wealth director of operations.

The ability to connect information across different parts of the client life cycle has enormous potential to improve processes throughout the business. Digital onboarding became an area of intense focus during the pandemic, when the ability to meet clients face to face became limited. For Marla Masters, strategic business analyst for the Wealth Management team, digitization was just the first step in a journey toward a more streamlined process.

“With the old system, our associates had to enter the same information multiple times to get it from the CRM and into Laserfiche,” Masters recalled. “Now, we’re able to use the same data, so when our associates enter information about a lead or a prospect, it’s still available as they transition to a client.”

The ability to automatically populate onboarding forms makes the process faster and easier for associates and clients alike. That streamlining means the firm can make the best impression possible on new clients right away, while giving support staff more time to put toward higher-value tasks. The firm can also use the information it collects to automatically file compliance documents, such as those identifying the beneficial owners of entity clients, yielding further back-office efficiency gains. With these integrations in place, Rehmann opened 600 new accounts and brought in $600 million in new assets in 2023 alone.

In addition to new account opening and onboarding, Rehmann has automated several other processes across the organization, including:

Compliance is a major concern for broker-dealers. Conducting audits used to be a resource-intensive process that involved harmonizing physical files in multiple locations. If the firm identified a compliance concern, it would then have to go back and fix things after the fact, which could be a complicated process.

Now, using Laserfiche Forms, Rehmann can put guardrails around processes that help the firm identify and fix problems while processes are still ongoing. As a result, many issues can be corrected on the fly, as opposed to having to go back and redo a process from scratch.

The firm has also leaned on the expertise of the consultants at CDI, a Laserfiche solution provider that offers training and technical resources to help implement large-scale system changes like the Salesforce transition. This ensures that organizations have the best available tools for their current needs. As a result, Rehmann’s success in building more efficient processes continues to build momentum. The low-code tools and solution templates available for Laserfiche Forms have made it possible for Masters to continue to refine the firm’s tools and processes further to make them more dynamic and user friendly. These solutions have reduced implementation time for new, automated processes from six months to approximately 30 days, freeing up IT resources to focus on strategy, rather than implementation.

In one recent example, Masters reconfigured the firm’s Excel-based trade ticket process to work via Laserfiche Forms. Rather than having to send emails to the right people and collaborate on a spreadsheet, associates can manage trade requests through a form-based system that requests information dynamically, driving an automatic escalation process to ensure trades are compliant and routing forms to the appropriate people for confirmation. At the end, trade tickets are saved automatically to client files.

“We address people’s needs and solve problems — it’s what credit unions do,” said Matthew Tingey, senior applications specialist at American United Federal Credit Union (FCU).

The philosophy has powered American United FCU since 1952, driving the organization’s growth to serve more than 26,000 people today. And along with that growth has come transformation, to create a single source of truth for records, integrate core technology systems and enable easier self-service for members.

“I was originally asking questions like, ‘Can I automate this? Can I batch process these things? Where can I take the annoying parts out of this process?’” said Tingey. “But it’s never good enough to solve my own problem. I need to solve problems for everyone in the organization. That’s where Laserfiche came in.”

The credit union now uses Laserfiche as its repository for member information, and the main workflow engine for automated processes across the organization, including finance, member relations, money movement and more, saving hundreds of hours each month and alleviating the burden of mergers as the organization continues to grow.

Like many growing organizations, American United FCU had information — including member documents, HR employee records, financial records and more — incoming from a multitude of channels, being handled in a variety of ways. Tingey, a dedicated credit union professional who has worked in every department across the organization, recognized a need to standardize archival of documents. At the same time, he saw an opportunity to automate information capture.  

The credit union began using Laserfiche process automation to automate records management activities, routing documents to where they needed to be stored within the repository, with the needed metadata, no matter the source.

“We’ve processed multiple millions of documents through there,” said Tingey. “Employees just need to click, and it gets to where it needs to go.”

American United FCU, supported by Laserfiche solution provider Millennial Vision (MVi), has built out a Laserfiche program that also supports the organization’s total quality management initiative, which aims to improve processes with an eye toward growth and profitability.

“These tools help us do things more efficiently, bridge the gap between some of our other software tools, and let our teams work in better collaboration. They really solve a lot of problems.”

With the initial solution in place, it was time to connect other systems to eliminate human error and make the repetitive tasks around document capture and storage even easier.

“From there, I wanted Laserfiche to talk back to our core [account system] to verify the information being captured,” Tingey said. “Now, it’s not just member documents that we’re processing through the system but applications, loan documents, and other daily work. The process has expanded and grown. It’s the single source of truth, and really the backbone of our process automation.”

In addition to having Laserfiche verify information from the organization’s core, CUProdigy, the credit union has a number of integrations that support a more seamless everyday work experience for employees.

Similarly, Tingey has transformed the way that the organization validates data, identifying potential issues through Forms processes (started by Laserfiche Workflow) that trigger when an issue occurs. These items were previously actively tracked by an employee on a continual basis; today, no one needs to remember to review the reports since processes are triggered in Forms when issues occur — plus, instructions are integrated into the form so that less training and individual knowledge is required to address them.

“More recently, we’ve added some API integrations with the core to this process,” Tingey explained. “We pull information out of CUProdigy to use in Laserfiche Workflow and Forms via database queries. Notes can be pushed back to accounts with a click of a button in a form. A couple of the items that instructed the user to fix an issue can now be resolved automatically via the API without human intervention. These data validations and the automation around them have allowed our QA to be more efficient, effective and consistent.”

One game-changing integration for the credit union was between Laserfiche and DocuSign, which allowed Tingey to automate a common activity for credit unions: member information changes. The legacy process was manually driven and admittedly not very employee- or member-friendly.

The organization has enhanced the overall experience for employees and members by embedding the entire process into Laserfiche Forms:

Similarly, the credit union’s wire transfer process has benefited from Laserfiche Forms and an integration with DocuSign.

“In terms of solutions, I borrow from myself,” Tingey said, explaining that he’s often able to build on successes by taking a process and repurposing it by making tweaks to forms or steps.

The legacy wire transfer process, which involved many manual activities performed by employees, left members and auditors with little visibility into the required steps. The new Laserfiche process, however, gives the credit union the ability to provide helpful context to the member about what they are signing and the wire disclosure via the DocuSign integration.

“Once complete, employees only need to click a button to attach it to the form, and processing of the wire in our core is done via API, with minimal tasks required by the employee,” Tingey said. The form is automatically routed to the necessary employees for review and processing, and all supporting documentation is archived in the Laserfiche repository with standard naming conventions and metadata.

“We’ve taken all the annoying little parts out of the process, like downloading a PDF, uploading it to DocuSign, marking fields on it, manually sending it to the member, downloading it again, etc.” said Tingey. “Another benefit is that when the member is prompted for signature, information will pop up to tell them exactly what they’re doing. It will let them know we’re doing a change of information process and here’s that we’re changing, or a wire transfer and here’s our wire disclosure. So instead of just signing something because they’re being asked to sign something, members feel more informed and taken care of.”

Since the initial implementation of Laserfiche for process automation, American United FCU has had a lot of success automating back-office activities as well as some member processes that employees handle. Going beyond the back office to positively impact the member experience has always been the ultimate goal, however.

“These automated processes are all increasing member satisfaction,” Tingey said. “Whether our members are in-branch or doing things remotely, they are saving time and don’t have to wait for a teller to manually find all the documents they need to get things done.”

Today, Tingey is focused on transforming the member experience with the launch of a new website, which will feature enhanced self-service features powered by Laserfiche Forms. One such feature is the rewards claim request, which enables members to claim an end-of-year dividend that the credit union offers as a perk for members based on the products and services they’ve used throughout the year. The claim form lists all of the possible products and services that qualify for a reward amount, and the member enters a few details to verify themselves. The form verifies this information against the database to qualify the submission, and a Laserfiche workflow sends an email confirmation, recording all activities into a database so that rewards can be paid out at the end of the year.

Laserfiche digitization and automation projects have supported increased focus on the member experience, even through significant periods of growth for the credit union. Since 2007, the organization has completed 10 mergers, enabling asset growth from about $39 million to just over $370 million (as of April 27, 2023).

While mergers are always a huge undertaking, the process was made less painful with standardized and automated processes in place. “Mergers are very, very large projects — everything gets dumped into a central location, and there’s cleanup and moving things around,” said Tingey. “If it weren’t for the structure from Laserfiche and the tools like Workflows, they would be nearly impossible.”

Laserfiche has become such a vital part of American United FCU’s infrastructure that many employees aren’t able to imagine life without it today.