Whiplash i.e. soft tissue injuries have for long been the bane of UK motor insurers. In May 2018 Insurance Times reported:- 

"Motor injury claims still remains the top concern for Aviva. 

It represents almost two-thirds (£59m) of the value. A £9m increase on figures from 2016.

Aviva now rejects around one out of eight whiplash claims it receives which are suspect or fraudulent.

Industry figures may have shown a drop in the number of fraudulent whiplash claims, but Aviva says it has not seen such a drop. It says it is currently investigating over 17,000 cases of personal injury which it suspects is fraudulent. This is 1,000 more than 2016."

Insurers may well see claimants getting round the planned reduced payments by adding in other related "injuries". That lead to360Globalnet introducing its Personal Injury Analyser in late 2019 lead by its major customers wishing to tackle this significant area of fraud.

One of the worst crimes a claims manager can make is not having sufficient reserves on claims. PI claims are particularly difficult to assess given the multiple and disparate data sources requiring analysis.

Much of this is unstructured data in medical reports, solicitors letters, emails and other communications. Looks like 360Globalnet has an answer.

Any such solution should include the ability to profile all the personal injury claims

• Identify all of the different injury types including multiple conditions
• Understand the ongoing prognosis for all of these continuing right through to settlement
• Identify all the characteristics that mark claims out as under-reserved or have much bigger potential than the human handlers realise
• Embed all those characteristics in weighted rules that run many times per day

This requires joining and matching unstructured  and structured data to give a complete picture of claimant occupation, injury type, period off and prognosis. Insurers need a 24/7 automated watch on the development of all the personal injury claims and highlight ones turning amber or red (reserve increase needed)

360Globalnet's customers particularly wanted to profile all the claimant lawyers and claims handling companies together with the nature and type of all the injury claims they are pursuing.

Breaking down the claim into different heads of claim

• Understand changes at individual solicitor level or overall about how claims are being presented, what is included etc…..
• Are they gaming the system?
• Understand how tactics are changing ahead of the whiplash reforms in 2020 both globally and at individual lawyer level

It should include a database of all of the large claims handling lawyers in the UK – if they are identified on the other side then the claim is potentially serious.

Worth investigating this further whether or not the whiplash reforms are delayed.