AXA cuts out the paper chase

AXA Assistance is using a fax-to-email service to process the thousands of pages of information it gets from people who have accidents or fall sick while travelling abroad.

The company provides services including accident and medical assistance and claims-handling to its corporate customers. It has been using the eFax fax-to-email service from j2 Global as a central hub for holiday insurance claims coming in from around the world.

The service enables all of AXA's claims to be converted into digital format, so they can be processed and archived electronically.

Jamie Little, general manager of AXA Assistance's UK claims operation explained: "Our business is the provision of 24-by-seven medical, travel and general assistance service to people that work for big companies or have certain types of insurance.

"These people are on holiday and get sick or injured and call us for assistance and we take care of them, and eFax has enabled us to provide the assistance or to communicate with the people involved much more easily."

Previously staff would have dealt with paper faxes, adding the information to the database and then faxing the client back. This system takes much of the paper out of the process by directing the faxes to an email address. Using the hosted service means that staff do not have to collect faxes or scan them into its database.

He added: "It's a much slicker and quicker way of getting information in a digital format."

Often there are physical documents that have to be sent across such as medical notes, and not all hospitals are able to send these electronically so fax is still an important tool.

Little said: "We need to see the paperwork - it's one of those situations where talking to people isn't enough and because there are bills that need to be dealt with straightaway the fax is still quite convenient."

Over the course of a year the company gets around 100,000 pages sent to it "so it's fairly significant", he said.