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Industry
Group Life and Disability Insurance |
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Business Profile
Since 1943, Amalgamated Life has specialized in providing group
life and disability insurance for trade union sponsored groups.
Amalgamated Life covers over 1.1 million union members and their
families across the United States for life, health, disability and
pension coverage. Amalgamated Life processes over $375 million
in benefits per year and maintains over $15 billion of life insurance
in force. The company maintains offices in Washington, DC and
Boston, as well as its home office in New York.
Business Scenario
Convey helped Amalgamated Life put an information reporting
process in place where none had existed, allowing for efficient and
compliant reporting.
Services
Taxport Services
TIN Compliance Services
Print Services |
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In 2005, Amalgamated Life was faced with a huge
predicament. The person solely responsible for handling
their 1099 processing left the company when nobody else
knew the process. Amalgamated Life needed to act fast
to get a system in place before the end of the year. They
signed with Convey’s Taxport Services in November and
were able to report successfully at year end.
Taxport Services Overview
Relying on Convey’s industry leadership, Amalgamated
Life completely outsourced their entire information
reporting process to Convey. On behalf of Amalgamated
Life, Convey processes, prints and files their data with
the IRS, SSA, and state agencies. Convey is in constant
communication with Amalgamated Life through
performance audit reports that include actions that they
have completed. Each of the 200 users at Amalgamated
Life have real time access to their data through a secure
web login and can monitor the entire process every step
of the way.
Enhancements Yield Convenience
Convey has made many enhancements to the Taxport
system’s user interface.
Jason Lobman, Project Leader at
Amalgamated Life, said he has noticed efficiencies with
the enhancements. “I like it,” said Lobman. “It is very
convenient and easy to use.” The user interface
enhancements allow Amalgamated Life faster look-ups
and more advanced searches on account information.
Amalgamated Life can now create reprints, emails
or changes in a single screen, improving their customer
service and support times to their recipients.
For security purposes, Amalgamated Life users are
separated into two groups: standard users, who have
look-up and reprint privileges and power users, who
have the ability to make changes to the data. Access
to system usage is restricted by a variety of permissions,
ensuring that only the right information gets put into the
right hands.
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Penalties Decrease with Convey
Prior to signing with Convey, Amalgamated Life was
burdened with B-Notices and Penalty Notices. According
to Lobman, they received hundreds of thousands of
notices in the past. Convey has helped them reduce the
number to only a small fraction of what it used to be.
In order to clear up the past penalties, Amalgamated Life
has had to dedicate valuable resources to the project.
“We are currently working with the IRS to get our
penalties waived for tax years 2004 and 2005,” said
Lobman. With Convey’s system in place, Amalgamated Life
can show reasonable cause and has been able to avoid
costly penalties they have received prior to using Convey’s
Taxport Services.
Postage Costs Diminish
Because Amalgamated Life is a Print Services client, they
are able to take advantage of the USPS National Change
of Address (NCOA) processing. NCOA processing allows
every print job to run through a database of postal
addressing information to update zip codes, address
abbreviations and forwarding requests on records prior
to mailing. With NCOA processing, Lobman says
Amalgamated Life’s returned mail has been greatly
reduced. “We used to get tons of returned mail,” said
Lobman. “Now it has been reduced to a slow drip.”
This has led to a significant cost savings in postage due
to the elimination of resending forms to bad addresses.
The Convey Experience
By relying on Convey’s compliance expertise, Lobman has
seen significant improvement. “Overall, Taxport is an
excellent tool,” said Lobman. “It allows us to easily handle
compliance issues and not worry about printing.”
Lobman is impressed with the customer service that
Amalgamated Life receives from Convey. “My overall all
experience has been excellent,” said Jason. ”As we fine
tune our systems to be able to download into Convey’s
system, things will become easier and easier, faster and
faster”. |
Download this case study as a PDF |
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