Norwich Union customers will be able to store policy documents online from next month as part of the insurer’s plans to make the most of a four-year IT consolidation programme.

The project to migrate all business systems onto a single technology platform concluded in October last year and the firm is now focusing on exploiting its capacity to the full.

A priority for 2008 will be online customer services, chief information officer Sean Egan told Computing.

“People have had enough of paper and call centres so we are increasingly automating our facilities,” said Egan.

From February, customers will be able to keep policies securely online and make adjustments to them electronically.

The insurer is also testing a system allowing policyholders to track the progress of car repairs through the web site, minimising contact with the call centre.

Improved efficiency is also a major priority, said Egan.

“Our focus for the next year or two will be how to exploit to the maximum what we have already invested, rather than building more systems, with the emphasis on cutting costs,” he said.

Call centres are still a major communications channel and a key benefit of the single technology platform is the ability to distribute calls more efficiently.

At times of crisis, such as last year’s floods, the insurer tended to see a dip in customer satisfaction because calls were coming in faster than they could be redirected.

But the new platform can route calls to 15 locations, rather than the four allowed by the previous system.

Norwich Union is at the forefront of a technologically conservative sector, said Forrester Research analyst Marc Cecere.

“Only a small percentage of insurers have moved to a single claims system, though it is an area where consolidation is both viable and lucrative,” he said.

“The claim-handling process is relatively consistent so they can be easily automated, which saves time and money.”