02 December 2019 | 5-minute read
“Imagine a world where a claim is paid before the customer realises they have experienced a loss.” Future at Lloyd’s Blueprint One, October 2019
Our customers are evolving
Advances in technology and the accessibility of data has given way for a smarter, more empowered insurance customer that has a level of expectation with regard to their claim experience, from regular human and technological interactions to instant indemnification.
Our customers want their claims to be paid quicker with less hoops to jump through.
It isn’t enough to just keep pace with our competitors, we need to create a claims model that blows them out of the water. Our customers in today’s digital age expect insurers to deliver customer service that meets the standards set by digital giants like Amazon and Google. Self service capabilities with little jargon, minimal touch points, flexible and multiple methods to interact, with full traceability and transparency.
In order to achieve this, we need to better align our claims management services to customer needs, embrace digital disruption and take a more customer-centric view of a loss. It isn’t just a transaction, it is someone’s loss and experience.
It is critical that the Lloyd’s market does not fall short of responding to modern customer service expectations.
After all, claims management and processing is one of the biggest contributing factors when it comes to customer satisfaction in insurance. We have an opportunity to influence the retention and attraction of business by focusing on the customer experience.
Service and skills
Claims as a service has to start with the customer and our value chain (brokers and coverholders) underpinned by a modernised claims service that delivers a customer-centric claims culture & profession, thinking of the customers’ expectations and how we meet them at a minimum but surpass them at every given opportunity, enriched by emotional intelligence and data rich insights, providing a form of advocacy to policyholders, clients and underwriters, enabling proactive and smart claims decisions at the earliest opportunity.
Today's claims workforce has a significant amount of technical claims handling skills, with relatively lower levels of expertise in customer service, value chain oversight, and data analytics.
We see the evolution of the claims process resulting in an increase in the need for data analytics and customer experience skills.
In order for talent to engage and grow within a claims transformation phase that will fundamentally change the model we operate in, we need to empower, support and upskill our talent.
Ironically, we are an industry that underwrites risk but we don’t take risk with our talent.
Claims can lead the way
The claims leaders and wider community have been champions for change to processes and technologies without major investment. The prioritisation of claims within Future at Lloyd’s will allow prior and current changes to be leveraged and an end-to-end transformative model and process to evolve as part of Lloyd’s Blueprint One.
For example Write-Back messaging is independent of electronic claim file (ECF) and handles in excess of 1.5 million claims messages a month for 39 carriers, responding to a key principle of Future at Lloyd’s, a data and document first claims orchestration model, one which can support carriers investment, be used to support migration from the old world to the new world and be enhanced for the future. Much like the principle of delivering PPL 2.0 for the complex risk exchange, Write-Back 2.0 can enable and deliver the claims orchestration hub and spoke model.
We have an opportunity to be positive, supportive and bold, enhancing the profile of claims both within the market and to our value chain, the claims profession and discipline is ready to respond, so let’s be:
- positive about our market and the claims service
- supportive of our people
- bold, influencing the Lloyd’s and London market’s future for claims.
Claims professionals and leaders have a key part to play in shaping the claims offering of the future. We need to empower, support and provide the opportunity for talent to engage and grow within a claims transformation phase that will transform the: current claims business model; our processes, people, and; the supporting technologies through the lens of our customers, with our value chain by our side.
Claims volumes are increasing, claims teams are shrinking, delegation and outsourcing is growing – if we can be smarter in managing claims volumes and our delegated agents, whilst establishing the Lloyd’s market as leaders in service excellence, and doing it quicker and cheaper – the Lloyd’s market and our value chain will have generated a successful future for all, but most importantly for the customer.
Published: 02 December 2019