Case study · Mapfre Middlesea & MSV Life Insurance
15 million insurance records. One archive. Ten months.
A legacy insurance archive transformed at scale — captured at 600 dpi, indexed, checked by four eyes and by automated re-verification, and delivered into the document management system Mapfre already used.
Completed
- Client
- Mapfre Middlesea & MSV Life Insurance
- Sector
- Insurance
- Scale
- 15 million documents
- Project
- January – October 2023
The situation
A large legacy archive — and a system already chosen.
Mapfre Middlesea and MSV Life Insurance held a large physical archive of legacy insurance records. Mapfre had begun a modernisation programme to digitise these paper archives as part of its digital transformation strategy.
In an initial meeting, Mapfre’s COO told Archives International that the company had already acquired an off-the-shelf document management system from a third-party provider. Whatever we produced had to integrate with it.
The problem
A business depending on paper.
The programme set out to:
End the dependency on paper
Eliminate the business’s dependency on paper-based archives.
Find documents faster
Improve document retrieval speed.
Reduce cost
Reduce operational and storage costs.
Be ready
Enhance compliance and audit readiness, and strengthen disaster recovery.
Delivery
Brought in after an earlier project was delayed.
Mapfre had first assigned the digitisation to another service provider. Before Archives International became involved, the first 1.2 million documents, in around 200 boxes, had not been finalised after roughly four months. That delay was a crucial factor in Mapfre seeking an alternative provider.
The earlier project
- documents
- 1.2M
- boxes
- ~200
- elapsed
- ~4 months
Not finalised
Archives International
- documents
- 15M
- in total
- 10 months
Completed, January – October 2023
The scale
Scale, handled end to end.
- documents
- 15M
- capture
- 600 dpi
- project duration
- 10 months
- of overall project deliverables securely destroyed
- 90%
- of overall project deliverables returned as instructed
- 10%
What we were asked to do
Digitise the archive — into a system we didn’t choose.
The objective was to convert Mapfre’s physical insurance records into indexed, searchable digital assets, integrated with the document management system the company already had.
Archives International was responsible for the whole route: inventory, secure collection, preparation, capture, indexing, quality assurance, secure transfer and integration — then partial re-archiving and the secure destruction of project deliverables.
Our approach
High volume, without losing control.
Collect and prepare
Inventory and classification
Records were inventoried and classified, then collected securely from the client’s premises. Onsite scanning was not possible.
Preparation
All fasteners — staples, paper clips and anything else that could damage scanners — were removed.
Capture and read
600 dpi, at speed
High-resolution capture at 600 dpi on high-speed scanners.
OCR and metadata
Optical character recognition, with metadata captured and indexed.
Check
Two layers of quality assurance
A manual four-eyes check, plus automated system re-verification of the metadata. Discrepancies were corrected before upload.
Deliver
Into the existing DMS
Secure file transfer by SFTP and integration into Mapfre’s existing systems, followed by client validation and sign-off.
Re-archiving and destruction
Partial re-archiving. 90% of overall project deliverables were securely destroyed; 10% were returned as instructed. Certified destruction used a subcontracted shredding service provider.
The transformation
From a paper archive to records in a working system.
Physical
- Insurance archive
- Legacy paper records up to A3.
Digital
- High-resolution images
- Captured at 600 dpi.
Searchable
- Full text
- Optical character recognition.
Indexed
- Indexed and verified
- Metadata captured, checked by four eyes and re-verified automatically.
Useful
- In the existing DMS
- Integrated with the system Mapfre already used.
The result
Fifteen million records, working inside the business.
Documented outcomes
- All records digitised and indexed
- Repository accessible through the document management system
- Audit trail completed
- Physical storage requirements drastically reduced
Business benefits identified
The case study also identifies these benefits. They are qualitative — no measurements are stated.
- Reduced storage costs — and former archive storage that could be used to create new office space
- Faster claims and underwriting
- Improved customer service
- A strengthened compliance posture
- Enhanced disaster recovery readiness
Project proof
The evidence behind the project.
Timeline
January to October 2023 — 10 months in total
Collection
Secure collection from client premises; onsite scanning was not possible
Capture
High-speed scanning at 600 dpi, documents up to A3
Quality
Manual four-eyes check and automated re-verification of metadata. Target: at least 99% scanning and indexing accuracy
Integration
Secure transfer by SFTP into the client’s existing, third-party document management system
Deliverables
Partial re-archiving; 90% of overall project deliverables securely destroyed, 10% returned as instructed
Security
Role-based access control, encryption in transit and at rest, and maintained audit logs.
Leadership
Archives International’s CEO, COO and CTO
Beyond the scan
Not millions of image files. Records in a system people use.
The output had to work inside a document management system Mapfre had already bought from another provider. That meant metadata captured, indexed and verified for integration into it — not simply fifteen million images handed over.
Once the records were in that system, the project closed with partial re-archiving: 90% of overall project deliverables were securely destroyed and 10% were returned as instructed. The case study notes that the former archive storage could be used to create new office space.
What could your information become?
Start with a specification or with a problem. Either way, the conversation starts with your information.