Technical FAQs for "FormSuite for Structured Forms"

Forms dropout is a vital tool for document processing applications. In most cases, dropout involves the removal of pre-printed content from a scanned image, such as graphics, logos, picture areas, or form field lines, leaving behind whatever data was added to the form. By isolating the document template’s entered text, an optical character recognition (OCR) engine can read and recognize much more accurately. In cases where filled data and and document images overlap, the dropout engine reconstructs the text as accurately as possible.

Although most OCR engines can process an entire document at once, it’s often easier to break the image up into a set of regions to recognize only the areas containing form text because the desired data may only be a small fraction of all the text within the image. Dropping out all elements of the document template speeds up the recognition process and reduces the likelihood of errors. De-skewing and pre-processing the image to remove noise also improves OCR performance.

3 Easy Steps for Using Form Dropout in Document Processing

Accusoft’s FormSuite for Structured Forms provides a variety of OCR tools that allow applications to read and convert machine printed characters into editable text. In addition to recognizing multiple languages, it can also use intelligent character recognition (ICR) to read hand printed form text and optical mark recognition (OMR) to read fillable marks like multiple choice bubbles or check boxes.

By utilizing image dropout to isolate text data, FormSuite can greatly improve OCR performance, reading forms at a higher rate and with a higher degree of accuracy. Applying image dropout is a simple process that can be completed with just three simple steps.

1. Identify Form Templates

Forms must first be properly identified to distinguish which elements need to be dropped out of the image. In most cases, organizations with automated forms processing workflows utilize a variety of form templates. Even if they only use one specialized form type, they may have multiple variations of that form. It’s also possible to process just a portion of a document. 

FormSuite’s identification capabilities allow it to quickly scan and identify documents within an application provided a matching template exists. If the image is unknown, it will attempt to match the form to a template in the form set. Identification thresholds set the minimum confidence required for a document to be considered a match. Higher values are especially helpful for an organization that uses many similar forms since the likelihood of an incorrect match is higher. Raising FormSuite’s Identification Quality setting will produce more accurate matches, but also requires more time and processing power since the recognition engine is working harder and comparing more individual document objects to known form templates. Lower settings may be more efficient when processing documents with minimal form content. FormSuite can also rotate unknown images up to 270 degrees prior to checking for a potential match. 

2. Register the Image

After the correct form is identified, the document needs to be mapped to the template image on record. This process is called registration and involves transforming two or more sets of image data into a single coordinate system. Accurate image registration ensures that the document image aligns properly with the template. Many dropout problems can usually be traced back to poor registration. FormSuite allows users to adjust the value of allowable mis-registration to help improve performance.

The transformation process is resolution independent and requires all parts of the document to be properly aligned. It’s important to reduce false positive image templates that are actually text; accidentally removing text data from the document can render sections of OCR data unreadable.

3. Dropout Template Content

When utilizing image dropout techniques, it’s important to identify cases where portions of the text have been incorrectly removed as part of an image template that has been removed from the document. This can manifest as removed strokes from letters and may induce errors in the recognized OCR data. 

Consider the following example:

When dropping out the template form, graphic lines that bisect the descender characters can cause issues. Without intelligent stroke reconstruction, the data below the dropout area may be affected as the OCR process may not correctly associate all the text image data together. In the example below, for instance, the recognition errors may include: ‘g’ – ‘a’, ‘j’ – ‘i’, and ‘y’ – ‘v’.

In cases like this one, advanced intelligent reconstruction techniques need to be deployed to correct the text for accurate OCR reading. FormSuite for Structured Forms reconstructs missing data and characters damaged during the form dropout process with the FormFix SDK, which is built into its core functionality.

4. Perform a Secondary Alignment

After the form image is clipped out, it’s a good idea to perform a secondary alignment at the field level. It can be difficult to align text properly when the entire image is still visible. By aligning smaller field areas after form dropout, the OCR engine will be able to recognize text more accurately, especially if there is significant image distortion in the filled image as compared to the form template image.

Boost OCR Performance with FormSuite for Structured Forms

By applying intelligent image dropout, document recognition can be both faster and more accurate. FormSuite for Structured Forms is a comprehensive solution for integrating powerful forms processing into your application. With robust dropout and imaging capabilities, FormSuite excels at preparing documents and images of all formats for OCR reading. Learn how you can improve OCR performance for forms processing by downloading a fully-featured trial of FormSuite for Structured Forms.

Although often considered a bit old fashioned, the insurance industry has made great strides in recent years to adapt to the changing needs of its customers. The latest generation of insurance customers expects faster service, better support, and more options from providers. Given these pressures, it’s no surprise that InsurTech developers have found ample opportunities to deliver solutions that help insurance firms better manage their workflows and create better customer experiences.

Despite the successes of this digital transformation, however, there are still a number of challenges that InsurTech developers face when building new applications. Investing heavily in creating powerful AI and big data tools might help those platforms stand out from the crowd, but they won’t find much success with firms if they don’t also provide the core functionality organizations need to service their customers. 

That’s why many InsurTech developers are turning to versatile SDK and API integrations to expand their feature sets without compromising their development timelines.

4 Major Challenges of InsurTech Applications

1. Security and Privacy

As the insurance industry continues to shift toward digital processes and platforms, it’s become more important than ever for InsurTech applications to keep sensitive data secure. While most organizations do invest in cybersecurity protections, they often don’t realize how their own practices could potentially pose a risk to customer information. This is especially true of insurers that rely on third-party programs for various tasks like document viewing and editing. Take, for instance, the case of Folksam Group, which inadvertently shared client data from as many as one million customers with Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Adobe in late 2020. 

2. File Management

Today’s insurers are receiving all kinds of documents, files, and images from their customers, which creates something of a document dilemma. A single auto accident claim, for instance, might have valuable information spread across multiple PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheet files, scanned images of hand-written forms, and image files. In order to process claims quickly and effectively, firms need InsurTech solutions that provide an all-in-one solution that can handle a broad array of file formats. Without these file management tools, insurers will be forced to use multiple programs to meet their needs, which creates inefficient dependencies and increases security risks.

3. Data Collection

Insurance companies gather quite a bit of information from form applications, both in physical and digital formats. Unfortunately, transferring that information from a form document into an InsurTech system is often a laborious manual process. Not only is manual data collection time consuming, it also increases the likelihood of human error. Even when firms do implement an InsurTech solution with forms processing capabilities, however, they often lack the capability to read certain types of form fields, especially those completed by hand. The ability to adapt to new form templates is also critical for organizations that want to invest in automation. 

4. Remote Collaboration

The COVID-19 pandemic may have forced insurance offices to rapidly embrace a remote work strategy, but many firms had already been investing in some form of hybrid work model for years. Nationwide was able to transition 98 percent of its workforce to remote status precisely because the company already had the technology solutions in place to allow insurance agents to work from home. Without some way of facilitating remote collaboration directly through InsurTech applications, organizations end up relying on email, which poses serious security concerns. Furthermore, with multiple copies of a document being distributed and downloaded, it quickly becomes difficult to know which version incorporates the most up-to-date changes.

SDK and API InsurTech Solutions

Building new functionality into an application always involves a tradeoff. When developers choose to code something from scratch, that means pulling team members away from another project or extending the product’s release timeline. In a fast-moving industry where InsurTech developers are racing competitors to be the first to market, it doesn’t make sense to design and build every aspect of an application in-house. 

Rather than pulling valuable development resources away from their innovative InsurTech features, developers can solve common insurance challenges much faster with SDK toolkits and API integrations. 

Secure File Viewing

The easiest way for InsurTech solutions to keep documents secure is to integrate HTML5 viewing capabilities directly into the application. Rather than being forced to download or open a file for viewing in a third-party application, employees can view multiple document formats natively. This is critical because it means no data will be shared with third-party programs.  Since the files remain safely within the secure InsurTech environment, firms can also control the level of access to any document, which prevents unauthorized individuals from downloading or viewing the contents. Thanks to API-based integrations like Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer, InsurTech developers can help their applications safely view more than 100 unique file types without any third-party dependencies.

Data Capture

By integrating forms processing capabilities into their applications, InsurTech developers can provide their clients with powerful tools that allow them to gather essential data quickly and accurately. As the essential connective tissue between customers and insurance databases, form field recognition integrations use OCR technology to intelligently identify form data and extract it for processing. They can also be set up to identify a wide range of insurance forms to quickly identify and scan documents to streamline processing workflows. Accusoft’s FormSuite for Structured Forms even goes a step further by incorporating powerful image cleanup functionality to ensure that data will be extracted as accurately as possible.

File Conversion

In order to meet the file management challenges of today’s insurance providers, InsurTech developers need document and image processing integrations that can read and write multiple file formats. Information spread across multiple documents, emails, or even texts can be processed using OCR technology, and then consolidated and converted into a variety of formats for easy reference and collaboration. Rather than juggling several files with different dependencies, an SDK integration like Accusoft’s ImageGear can easily output processed files in PDF, RTF, XML, or DOCX format for viewing and editing within a single application.

Editing and Annotation

Providing secure document viewing capabilities solves only one half of the insurance collaboration challenge. InsurTech applications also need to provide both internal and external stakeholders with the ability to edit and markup documents throughout the application and claims process. Content processing integrations can allow authorized users to make changes to documents completely within their InsurTech solution and review markups and comments from other collaborators. 

Since all editing occurs within the application itself, there’s no need to worry about anyone downloading a document to make changes locally and creating confusion over which version is the most up-to-date. Redactions may also be necessary to hide private or confidential information from unauthorized viewers. As an added benefit, PrizmDoc Viewer’s editing features allow users to make a variety of markups and redactions while preserving the integrity of the original file.

Accelerate Your InsurTech Application Development with Accusoft

Accusoft’s collection of powerful SDK toolkits and API integrations provide innovative InsurTech developers with the resources they need to solve core insurance industry challenges. By implementing proven functionality into their applications, project managers can streamline the development process and dedicate more resources to the innovative features that will set their platform apart from the competition.

Whether you’re looking to incorporate versatile document viewing and editing or need a more accurate forms processing solution, Accusoft’s family of InsurTech SDKs and APIs can help your development team get to market faster. Learn more about what our products can do for your application in our InsurTech fact sheet.

Although it might feel as though time has been standing still for several months, 2020 is finally coming to an end. It’s been a year of unprecedented disruption for many industries, and insurance companies often found themselves struggling to adapt to change. Firms that had the foresight to invest in digital transformation backed by InsurTech solutions, however, proved more capable of meeting the moment and are now poised to thrive in 2021 and beyond.

As the new year approaches, it’s helpful to take a look back at some of the key trends that defined 2020 and created opportunities for innovative InsurTech applications. Understanding the pressures facing the insurance industry will also identify InsurTech projections to watch in the future.

5 Insurance Trends and InsurTech Projections

1. Remote Collaboration

No discussion of 2020 insurance industry trends would be complete without exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected organizations. According to a survey conducted by Deloitte, 48 percent of insurance executives agreed that the pandemic revealed how unprepared their business was for such a disruptive crisis. From the sudden transition to a remote workforce to a shift in risk adjustment factors across the market, insurers have had to scramble to adapt their operations and continue delivering quality services to clients.

With so many employees going remote and customers unable to meet with representatives in-person, organizations that made early investments in digital collaboration tools and automation software were better equipped to meet the challenges of 2020. The industry is expected to make tremendous investments in digital transformation in the upcoming year, whether it’s in powerful document editing and management software, file conversion tools, or secure communication channels that better facilitate true collaboration.

2. Customer Demographic Shifts

Prior to 2020, insurance customers tended to be older, with millennials purchasing life insurance policies at lower rates and often delaying home ownership until later in life. This trend seems to have reversed itself in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, with life insurance application activity growing twice as fast for people under 45 than those aged 45-49. Since many of these younger buyers are first-time applicants, it’s important for insurance agents and firms to make the process as streamlined and easy to navigate as possible.

According to a nationwide industry survey, just over 75 percent of independent insurance agents are age 50 or older and nearly 68 percent have more than 20 years of experience. Having such a long-tenured workforce poses challenges when it comes to implementing new processes and reaching out to potential customers with different needs and preferences than those of earlier decades. In order to remain competitive, however, firms must invest in the right InsurTech solutions to gather data that will give them a better picture of what insurance products and services younger customers will find attractive.

3. Robotic Process Automation

The shift to a remote workplace greatly disrupted traditional workflows. Without centralized offices, key insurance tasks like claims processing and document verification are much more difficult to perform manually. Organizations that had already invested in robotic process automation (RPA) to handle repetitive tasks were in a much better position to thrive in a remote landscape. 

Insurance companies must be able to process a variety of forms during an application or a claim. Having automated InsurTech tools in place to quickly extract data from a variety of sources and carry information over from one form to another not only saves time, but also greatly reduces the risk of human error. For a remote workforce, automation software helps to consolidate complex workflows to eliminate version confusion and enhance collaboration.

4. Artificial Intelligence

Risk assessment and data analysis are crucial to the underwriting process. In a volatile economic environment, insurance firms are under more pressure than ever before to set the right premiums. Although the data is now readily available to make more accurate assessments, sorting through that information manually is difficult and time consuming. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated, the scope of risk can change dramatically in a very short period of time. By deploying artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze risk factors and review potential fraud claims quickly and accurately, insurers can create customized policies and provide more responsive service to their customers.

Implementing AI-driven algorithms as part of the underwriting and fraud analysis process will only be one part of the challenge facing firms in 2021. These powerful tools must have sufficient data in order to make informed predictions. By improving the data collection process with form processing tools, file conversion, and programmatic searches, insurers can provide their analytics platforms the best possible information for analysis.

5. Customer Experience

One of the few positive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic was that it forced organizations across every industry to find new ways of connecting with their customers. The insurance industry has traditionally lagged behind other sectors, tending to lean upon a combination of tradition and legacy infrastructure to engage with customers. But the events of 2020 have underscored the need for a true digital transformation that fundamentally reorients the way firms market, sell, and deliver insurance products. The need has become so evident, in fact, that a recent PWC survey found that 70 percent of insurance CEOs are prioritizing customer experience and user interfaces as their top investment opportunity.

In the coming year, firms will likely continue to invest in technology that makes it easier for customers to research and manage their policies. Whether it’s applications that allow them to submit claims information in a variety of file formats or forms and contracts that automatically fill in commonly used form fields, the core focus will be on making the customer experience as frictionless as possible with a variety of InsurTech benefits.

The Role of InsurTech

Many insurance companies will be looking to upgrade their technology stack and client-facing applications in response to these trends. That creates a tremendous opportunity for InsurTech developers who are creating the next generation of software tools to streamline core processes common to the insurance industry.

Delivering those digital products on a short timeline with limited resources, however, can be quite a challenge for even the most innovative InsurTech startup. That’s why many of them turn to third-party solutions to provide proven functionality that lies outside the scope of their development expertise. 

Features like forms processing, document conversion, and image viewing can be easily integrated into an application using an SDK or API, saving the team weeks or even months of work. This helps InsurTech companies get their products to market faster to meet the digital transformation needs of their customers and keep them a step ahead of their competitors.

InsurTech SDKs and APIs

Accusoft’s family of processing and automation SDKs and APIs provide InsurTech developers with the tools they need to easily plug essential functionality into their applications so they can get back to focusing on their most innovative features. With a variety of deployment options and a diverse set of code-based solutions, we have the flexibility to meet your software’s unique use case and substantially reduce your time to market.

Whether you’re looking to integrate document viewing, collaboration, or processing to your InsurTech platform, our SDK and API-based products can help you deliver the InsurTech benefits your customers are looking for. Learn more about our insurance solutions or contact us today to demo one of our products.

Accusoft’s FormSuite for Structured Forms is a powerful SDK that allows you to integrate character recognition, form identification, document cleanup, and data capture capabilities into your software applications. You can set up unique form templates based on your processing needs and then design customized output architecture to extract data for delivery to a database or other downstream applications, helping you get to production faster or bring a new level of functionality to your legacy systems.

Setting all of that functionality up, however, can be a daunting task, especially if you’re working with a wide variety of form types. That’s why our FormSuite enablement services team is available to help you implement the features you need to ensure lasting results. Whether you’re facing bandwidth constraints or lack the resources to build expertise quickly, our FormSuite experts bridge the gap to make your project a success. Our enablement services team takes a five step approach to every engagement.

The Accusoft Approach to Enablement Services

Step 1: Thorough Architecture Review

We start by conducting a top to bottom analysis of your production or operational environment. Our review not only evaluates your system architecture and data workflow, but also breaks down the details of your potential use cases and existing work samples. 

Step 2: Identifying the Right Fit

Next, we determine the best FormSuite options based on your unique requirements and build you a custom enablement plan that will equip you with the instruction and assistance you need for a successful implementation.

Step 3: Training Your Team

Armed with information about your application’s specific requirements, we develop a customized training program to give your team a solid foundation for future development and ongoing maintenance. From guidance on form template creation and image enhancement to working with the forms API, we provide you with targeted guidance designed to help you solve potential challenges unique to your application environment.

Step 4: Implementation Support

Once the training is complete, you’ll have the foundational knowledge required to build the forms processing workflows your application requires. Our FormSuite experts remain on call to answer your questions so you can achieve your integration faster and ensure that you’re processing forms accurately.

Step 5: Preparing for Long-Term Success

Our enablement services prepare you to manage your implementation over the long term. We not only show you how to maintain the current environment, but also identify potential opportunities to deploy new features as your application scales in the future.

Keep the Partnership Going

Following your integration, we also provide ongoing support options to our customers whether or not they’ve utilized our enablement services. You get free Upgrade Support for 90 days after initial purchase, which includes email support and product upgrades. After that period, you can extend Upgrade Support, or elect to transition to our Standard Support or Priority Support annual plans.

To learn more about FormSuite for Structured Forms enablement services, talk to one of our solutions engineers. We’re ready to help you get your integration started!

Few organizations will view the final weeks of 2020 as a bittersweet moment. In addition to the staggering human toll inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic, entire industries saw longstanding business models upended, forcing companies to completely rethink their relationships with employees, vendors, and customers. The financial services industry was no exception, and 2020 saw FinTech becoming more important than ever as firms rushed to embrace digital transformation in response to the ongoing crisis. Many of these trends appear poised to continue well into 2021 and beyond. 

FinTech Defined

FinTech is short for “financial technology,” but the term itself is applied quite broadly throughout the financial services industry. It can be used to refer to a new generation of non-traditional startup companies focused on building digital tools that allow people to manage their finances in new ways that disrupt established industry practices. The term is also sometimes used to describe the technology itself, however, especially since established financial organizations are investing heavily in innovative applications and services of their own.

FinTech Trends for 2021

Although 2020 is sure to be remembered as a year of unprecedented disruption, 2021 might well come to be known as a year of remarkable adaptation and transformation. Now that organizations have developed innovative digital strategies to navigate a more volatile economic landscape, they must now take up the challenge of putting those plans into practice.

FinTech developers need to keep an eye on these trends as they build new applications and services in order to provide the functionality and performance demanded by the financial industry. Many established firms will be taking a long look at their infrastructure and technology solutions to assess whether or not their current systems are up to the challenge of digital transformation. If their existing platforms fall short, they will need to either seek out new FinTech products with more robust feature sets or explore options for integrating new capabilities into their legacy software.

Top 5 FinTech Trends to Watch in 2021

1. Customer-Centric Applications

The proliferation of FinTech solutions has brought customers to the forefront of every financial organization’s thoughts. Where the financial industry once designed processes and applications to suit their own needs, today they must focus on delivering a high-quality customer experience if they want to remain competitive in a crowded marketplace. The process often begins with reducing friction wherever possible to help end-users get the products and services they need faster. With customers increasingly interacting with the financial industry across multiple channels, FinTech developers must build solutions that strengthen those connections and expand their potential.

Eliminating manual processes, cutting down on external software dependencies, and automating routine tasks will continue to be a major point of emphasis for FinTech applications. Customers no longer have the patience to repeatedly fill out lengthy forms or go through the frustrating process of downloading, printing, signing, and scanning documents. By building document viewing, file conversion, and data capture capabilities into their applications, FinTech developers can provide firms with a unified digital solution that addresses multiple needs and streamlines their customer experience.

2. Digital-First Collaboration

According to an IDG study on the enduring business impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic, about 40% of employees are expected to be working remotely on a semi-permanent basis as of January 2021. That means financial organizations will continue to need digital tools in place to provide secure access to files and facilitate collaboration. Physical documents must first be converted into a variety of digital formats with high levels of accuracy and then made available to remote users without compromising data integrity or creating confusion over version history. 

Without a dedicated solution on hand for viewing, editing, and managing documents, users are forced to resort to a variety of ad hoc workarounds and third party software solutions that can quickly compromise data security and increase the likelihood of errors. By integrating those features into their FinTech applications, developers can help firms keep all of their documents and files safely within a secure infrastructure while still making them available through easy-to-use web-based API tools.

3. Big Data Management

Financial organizations continue to collect huge amounts of data in the course of their business. Some of this data is unstructured and must be processed using powerful analytics tools to identify important trends and potential risks that can help firms make better strategic decisions. But they also gather a great deal of structured data as well, typically from structured forms like loan applications, tax documents, and bank statements. Managing all of this information more efficiently will be an important goal for 2021 because having good data insights is essential for identifying opportunities, optimizing products and services, and automating essential services.

FinTech developers can help improve data processing by building applications capable of extracting information quickly and accurately. Financial data algorithms are quite good at identifying different types of data and sorting it into the proper place for analysis, but they’re often slowed down by documents that are damaged or difficult to read. Thanks to software integrations that provide robust image cleanup, document alignment, and form recognition tools, FinTech applications can ensure that firms are starting with the cleanest possible source data when extracting information for processing.

4. Pandemic Proofing

Although there are several promising COVID-19 vaccines on the horizon, challenges with supply and distribution will keep most companies operating under the same social distancing and remote workplace guidelines they put in place in 2020 for much of the year. Even if restrictions are lifted earlier than expected, the risk-averse financial industry will continue to think about how to avoid similar disruptions by implementing paperless processes and electronic data capture options. Just as retailers and manufacturers are rethinking their supply chain infrastructure, financial services companies must reassess their FinTech applications in light of recent challenges.

Developers can help the financial industry better “pandemic proof” their processes by integrating better document viewing, file conversion, and data capture tools into their software solutions. Not only can they automate traditionally time-consuming (and error-prone) manual data entry tasks, but they can also build in additional functionality to auto-generate data for new contracts and allow people to sign documents digitally to eliminate the need for face-to-face meetings. 

5. Banking Partnerships

Banks and other traditional financial institutions are increasingly partnering with FinTech startups to reach new customers and engage with existing clients over new channels. As Deloitte noted in a recent study, the pandemic has removed many of the obstacles to digital transformation in the financial industry and forced many established firms to pour tremendous resources into their tools and infrastructure. But as banks engage with innovative startups, they will need to find ways to integrate operations and data quickly to remain competitive and roll out new services successfully.

That integration process will be easier if they have flexible software solutions in place that can navigate multiple file types, perform cleanup and conversion, and extract essential data quickly and accurately. Whether they’re building that functionality into entirely new applications or integrating features into existing legacy systems, FinTech developers will play a key role in helping financial organizations accelerate their merger and partnership timetables so they can begin reaping the benefits more quickly. 

Solving Your FinTech Challenges with Accusoft

Accusoft’s collection of RESTful APIs and SDKs provide FinTech developers with the tools they need to build comprehensive content processing, conversion, and automation solutions into software applications. Whether you’re using PrizmDoc Suite to view, edit, and convert documents directly inside their financial applications, capturing valuable financial data from various form types with FormSuite for Structured Forms, or embedding powerful image cleanup, OCR, and annotation tools into your application with ImageGear, our family of software integrations allow you to add the functionality your FinTech solutions need to meet the challenges of 2021 and beyond.

To learn more about how our software tools can enhance your FinTech applications, talk to one of our integration experts today.