Protective Life has been around for just more than 100 years, but it has developed a growth strategy that is decidedly more 2008 than 1908. To ensure the carrier's acquisition plan remains successful, improvements to the business processes, particularly on the financial systems end, have been imperative.
Protective's acquisitions division has worked to acquire blocks of policies from other companies and has developed expertise in this area. In addition, retirement savings and investment products, which consist of annuities, guaranteed investment contracts, and funding agreements, are marketed through Protective's life and annuity division and stable value products division.
"For a long time, we were doing everything manually," says Sara Thackerson, director 1 and manager bank reconciliation unit, Protective Life. "We would get the cleared checks back, we had to file them, and then we had to pull the checks if we needed to make a copy of a cleared check. We were looking to automate the system to become more efficient and cut back on the paperwork."
Before purchasing the T-Recs solution in 2002, Protective had dealt with Chesapeake using the vendor's unclaimed property system. "We were doing unclaimed properties with a spreadsheet and totally manually," says Thackerson. "We needed a way to automate that system, as well."
The carrier selected Chesapeake's unclaimed property system because company executives felt, at that juncture, it was a fit for Protective's environment. When it came time to bring in a reconciliation system, Protective already was familiar with Chesapeake and believed it made sense to go with a vendor the carrier had worked with in the past, according to Thackerson. "[Chesapeake] was very good about customer service, keeping the system updated, and doing exactly what it had agreed upon for the unclaimed property system," she says. "That's why we went ahead with the company."
Earlier this year, the vendor released its newest version of T-Recs Enterprise, which stands for Total Reconciliation Solution. One of the benefits of the upgrade is it gives corporations the ability to satisfy the requirements imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley regulations.
This is the second time Protective has upgraded the T-Recs system in the last six years, and the carrier is satisfied with the new release, attests Thackerson.
The new version has more flexibility in terms of what numbers can be brought in from the carrier's policy administration and general ledger systems. "It has more reporting tools than what we've had before," says Thackerson. "The biggest thing for us is the volume of business this new version will hold."
T-Recs Enterprise operates in a platform-independent environment and can handle daily volumes ranging from thousands to tens of millions transactions. The solution generates a full complement of management reports and readily supports the creation of company-unique reports.
With all of Protective's acquisitions, Thackerson explains the carrier is working to enter each of its varied expense accounts and bank accounts on the T-Recs enterprise system. "In order to get everything in a central location, we decided this was the best tool and had the capability to do the things we needed to move forward," she says. "We want to have everything housed, reconciled, and handled in one central location, which is here at our home office in Birmingham, [Ala.]."
Sandra Johnston, the carrier's second vice president-financial systems corporate accounting, indicates the financial staff has been able to process policies from about 100 companies on the ledger. "I'd say probably half of those companies are accounts on our client/server reconciliation system in addition to our enterprise system," says Johnston. "We've added all these companies to the best of our ability on this [T-Recs] system."
The dilemma companies face when acquiring blocks of policies is to be able to do the additional work without increasing staff. "In order to [grow] and bring more accounts and volume into the home office, we needed to look at a way we could bring in more workload without having to add more staff," says Thackerson. "With automated systems such as these, we were able to bring in more responsibilities without having to add head count. This really has helped us to keep the number of employees from increasing."
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