Litigation Management for a large Life Insurance Company

About

The customer is one of the most preferred life insurance companies in India, presently providing policies to a million customers in the country. Its shareholders include one of the largest global insurance provides and several public sector banks of India.

The Challenge

As per Provakil’s research, a life insurance company in India is bound to have more cases in a district consumer forum, compared to a general insurance company where there are more district court cases. It will also have a volume of cases under the Ombudsman. Since there are only 50%-60% of district consumer courts updating information online in India, the customer relies heavily on external counsels to help them in case tracking. The customer currently tracks over 1500 cases. There is an additional volume of Ombudsman and Permanent Lok Adalat cases being tracked.

Provakil has also noted the following challenges faced by the customer -

• Keeping track of police complaints and FIRs.
• Keeping a track of litigation including consumer and Ombudsman.
• Poor data maintenance of case information like a case number, jurisdiction, next dates, etc.
• Keeping track of court proceedings.
• Tracking new litigations filed against the company and senior management.
• Communicating with external counsels and difficulty in collating information retrieved.
• Filing replies and complying with court orders in time to avoid penalties.
• Adhering to deadlines for 138, Ombudsman, RBI, Shareholders Notice as prescribed by law.
• Transparency and accountability within the organization.
• Lack of visibility to senior management on key metrics and actionable.
• Difficulty in generating accurate IRDAI reports on a quarterly basis on consumer matters.

The lack of a case management system and too much reliance on manual processes without a tool has resulted in poor management of data within the legal team. Provakil also noted that there are no tools that the customer utilizes in managing external lawyer invoices.

The Solution

Provakil litigation management has provided the following benefits to the customer's legal team -

• Automatic Court Updates- Provakil has integrations with over 8000+ digitized courts in India. This lets Provakils provide automatic updates on dates, orders, judgments, or any other public information released by courts on their website to the relevant lawyer. Specifically for Ombudsman cases, Provakil provides an easy-to-use system, wherein lawyers inside a legal department find it extremely easy to update dates right from their mobile application itself. As soon as a user updates a date, Provakil informs all other relevant stakeholders about the change. For any other digitized forum, Provakil offers 100% automation for any public data released by the court.
• External Counsel Management- Provakil provides a legal department to tag their external counsel with their existing cases in the Provakil tool. It automatically informs an external counsel as soon as its case appears in a cause list via an SMS or email. It also enabled a legal department to send survey forms in order to capture daily hearing updates like roznama, upcoming compliances, order type, lawyer invoices, etc.
• Process Automation- Provakil has helped automate multiple processes internally. Some of them include:
• Daily Causelist Generation- A daily cause list is generated for each user depending on the cases they are allocated and sent to them via email every day, week, fortnight, or month.
• Requisition for Legal Action- Provakil automates requests arising from claims or business teams to initiate legal action against a customer. When the business user requests a legal action, a relevant entry gets created on the legal team's dashboard.
• Alerts for New Cases- A real-time alert is set for the company and other key stakeholders within the organization. The legal team is notified as soon as a new case is filed anywhere in India.
• IRDAI Reports- Standard reports as prescribed by the IRDAI are generated from the system. These include BAP, Ombudsman, Forums Pendency, Ageing Reports, etc.
• Internal Collaboration- Provakil system has the necessary tools for internal team collaboration for cross-department coordination. These tools include task management, document management, notes, email, and calendar integrations. All cases in the system are allocated based on the organization structure with user profiles reflecting the same. There are detailed user access controls to ensure proper visibility and accountability. Web and mobile applications ensure ease of access.
• MIS Reporting- Provakil system includes multi-level reporting for different stakeholders. The senior management has visibility on different processes, metrics, compliances at an aggregate and department and sub-department level. There are reports to track lawyer performance. Reporting is done on case disposal, additions, across policy categories, etc. Provakil has also automated IRDAI legal reports for the customer including BAP report, forum-wise pendency, and other monthly/quarterly reports.