French-language claims and policy servicing for a Canadian insurer

The challenge

French-language service capacity was the insurer's binding constraint: Montreal's bilingual insurance labour market is competitive and expensive, and offshore French from North Africa and Mauritius had been assessed as the wrong register for Quebec. The insurer needed genuine Quebec-appropriate French at a sustainable cost.

Approach and methodology

• Staffed the French desk in Puerto Plata, drawing on the north coast's French-language exposure
• Developed a Quebec French register module jointly with the insurer's Montreal training team
• Ran the desk on the insurer's clock without night differentials
• Calibrated fortnightly with Montreal quality against the same rubric as the internal French team

Results

Claims intake cycle time fell from 9.4 days to 3.1 days, French-language service level rose from 74% to 93%, and fully loaded cost per FTE fell 54% against Montreal, partly reinvested in expanding French capacity. In a blind listening test, the insurer's Montreal staff ranked the Puerto Plata samples first and were surprised to learn their origin.

Enduring value

The Quebec French register module is a shared asset now used in the insurer's own onboarding, and the single-pass claims intake design has been adopted across the insurer's English-language operation.