The Insurance Commission of WA (ICWA) says it has become more efficient since automating its claims process using optical character recognition (OCR) technology two years ago.

Claims documents received by the motor injury insurer are automatically scanned and stored in the OCR system, sparing staff the task of keying in data.

Automating the claims process has saved ICWA about $1.6 million, and the figure is expected to rise to $1.8 million annually in future.

The cost of indexing a document has been cut to 80 cents from $1.30 two years ago.

“The technology has enabled us to handle increased volumes of documents while reducing administration costs and staff time spent on data entry,” ICWA CEO Rod Whithear said.

“This is a tangible productivity improvement.”

The ICWA, which manages more than 30,000 insurance claims every year, now plans to implement the second phase of its OCR project.

“This phase will take most of the fields not currently identified in the documents and automatically populate them into our claims and financial systems,” Business Improvement Manager Neil Morfitt said. “This means the ICWA will be able to automatically process payments for most claims invoices.”

The ICWA estimates it will lower the administration cost of processing each invoice to less than $3 from $7.50.