The objective: compensate miners faster and with less red tape.
The Coal Health Compensation (CHC) schemes covering respiratory and vibration diseases,
are the biggest personal injury schemes in British legal history. In February 2004,
Capita was appointed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change to administer
both schemes.
"Our main objective was to get miners compensated faster and with less red tape
but without compromising the schemes" says Andrew Beer, Managing Director
of Capita Insurance Services BPO. "To do that we had to develop employees’
skills, improve quality standards and deliver efficiencies in claims processing.
Our business transformation programme focused on productivity and staff management,
short and long term planning, process re-engineering and IT. The programme yielded
immediate results."
To provide a one-stop shop for devising and implementing solutions and improvements,
we created a solutions centre that brought together key support functions such as
planning, project management, quality and business change. And to measure improvements
across all areas we introduced a business excellence model. After 3 years we’d delivered
an overall operational improvement of around 70%*, measured against the model. One
change alone – the introduction of compensation calculators – saved 200 working
years and £60m in related costs, and we’ve saved almost £20m through fraud investigation.
In 2007, CHC received Recognised for Excellence 5 Star status, winning a special award
for Employee Satisfaction. We also won the North of England Excellence Award for
private sector companies. This was followed in 2008 by a coveted Ambassadors’ Blue
Riband Award in the Chartered Quality Institute and London Excellence national award
scheme.
Today, Capita pays out on average £0.5m in compensation to former miners every
working day. And by January 2009, over 738,000 claims had been settled, involving
payments totalling over £3.98bn.
