How Ascentiel gets more than 80% of claims declarations completed in one go
In conversation with
Julien Ben Lahcen
Managing Director, Personal Lines Division
Ascentiel replaced repeated document follow-up with one guided claims journey. Today, more than 80% of its claims declarations are completed in a single step.
About
Ascentiel Groupe is an independent French insurance broker with 150 employees across nine brands serving individuals, professionals, and small businesses.
Industry
Insurance brokerage
Workflow
Claims declarations
Operational scale
150 employees across nine insurance brands
Challenge
Collecting a complete claims declaration required repeated exchanges between Ascentiel's customers and claims team. Information and documents arrived separately, leaving claims managers to follow up until they had everything required to begin handling the claim.
Solution
Ascentiel’s claims managers use Penbox to send each customer a personalized claims journey by SMS or email. Customers provide the required information and documents through one secure journey, while automated reminders continue until the request is complete. The team is notified as soon as everything has been submitted.
Results
Ascentiel reports that more than 80% of its claims declarations are completed in a single step. Claims managers spend less time chasing missing information, customers receive one clear request, and the group can use the same approach for claims, home-insurance applications, and changes of address.
Every incomplete declaration creates more work
Ascentiel Groupe is an independent French insurance broker with more than 50 years of experience. Its 150 employees work across nine brands serving individuals, professionals, and small businesses. The group operates across the insurance value chain, from multichannel distribution to claims management.
That range creates a simple operational challenge: every customer situation requires the right information to reach the right team before work can continue.
Claims make this particularly visible. When a customer reports an accident, the first message is only the beginning. The claims manager still needs a complete declaration and supporting documents such as the accident report. If something is missing, the claim cannot move forward as expected.
Before Penbox, collecting those elements meant repeated exchanges between the customer and Ascentiel's team. Each incomplete response created another request, another wait, and another action for the claims manager to track.
The work was not difficult because sending a file is technically complicated. It was difficult because the customer had to understand what was required, provide every element, and do so in a way the claims team could use.
One guided request instead of repeated exchanges
Since 2022, Ascentiel has used Penbox to give that process a clearer structure.
When a customer contacts the group to report a claim, the claims manager sends a personalized Penbox journey through an SMS or email link. The customer opens the link, answers the relevant questions, and uploads the requested documents in one place.
As soon as the journey is complete, Ascentiel's team is notified and receives the full submission. The claims manager no longer has to reconstruct the declaration from separate emails or determine which part of the request is still outstanding.
The result is a better-prepared claim and a clearer next step for everyone involved.
Follow-up that does not depend on memory
Not every customer completes a claims declaration immediately. A document may be stored somewhere else. The customer may be interrupted. They may simply forget to return to the request.
Without automation, every delay becomes a task for the claims team. Someone needs to identify the incomplete declaration, send another message, and continue doing so until the required information arrives.
Penbox keeps that follow-up moving automatically. Customers receive reminders until the journey is complete, while the claims manager retains a clear view of the request. The team can focus on handling claims instead of manually chasing every outstanding document.
According to Ascentiel, this approach produces response rates above 80%, with more than 80% of claims declarations completed in a single step.
That metric matters because it describes more than declaration completion. It means fewer interrupted claims, fewer manual follow-ups, and more cases arriving ready for the team to handle.
Built around the way claims managers work
A static questionnaire could collect answers, but Ascentiel needed each journey to reflect the claim being handled. The claims team can personalize the request so customers see the questions and documents relevant to their situation.
This gives the people closest to the work control over the customer interaction. They can make the request specific enough to produce a complete response without forcing the customer through unrelated questions.
It also allows Penbox to fit into Ascentiel's existing operation. The group did not need to replace its management tools to improve the work around them. Penbox structures the exchange with the customer and connects that contribution back to the team's process.
“Penbox is flexible, highly customizable, and easy to integrate with management systems. The team is responsive and close to its customers.”
Julien Ben Lahcen, Managing Director of Ascentiel’s Personal Lines Division
Extending the same approach beyond claims
The same problem appears outside claims whenever an insurance process depends on complete, sensitive customer information.
Ascentiel also uses secure Penbox journeys during online home-insurance applications and when a customer changes address. In each case, the objective is the same: collect every required element through one structured request and give the operational team a complete submission it can act on.
This has allowed Ascentiel to centralize interactions that previously depended on multiple exchanges while keeping each journey adapted to its purpose.
A complete response keeps the claim moving
Ascentiel began with a familiar operational problem. Claims managers were spending time gathering the information required to start their actual work. Customers were responding across multiple exchanges without always knowing what remained incomplete.
Penbox turned that back-and-forth into one guided journey. The customer knows what to provide. Reminders happen automatically. The claims team is notified when the submission is complete.
More than 80% of claims declarations are now completed in one step. For Ascentiel, that means fewer requests to coordinate and more claims arriving ready to move.