Camelot has published an excellent report- follow the link below to the orginal authored by Stephen Walker and Chris Hazel; members of the Camelot network of expert consultants.

Why excellent? It does not pretend there is a panacea for success, nor that AI is an automatic key to unlock competitive advantage and success. It takes a holistic view combining the need for understanding your customer well to inform vision, clear strategy and ensuring clarity that claims is a key part of the insurance value chain to deliver risk prevention as well as risk mitigation.

When customers need help to right a loss the insurance company that steps up to the plate and delivers exemplary service wll gain loyalty and the chance to reduce customer churn.

Skilled, professional and caring claims handlers are vital to this. Carriers, MGAs and brokers may keep claims inhouse, outsource to service providers or decide on a hybrid strategy. They must, however, ensure they have complete visibiity of the status of any claim whoever is managing it. Reputation depends on that.The same goes for embedded insurance; no neo-bank offering embedded insurance can rely on SLAs and insurers/service providers to satisfy the bank's customers.They must insist on the insurance partner to provide systems that enable the banks insurance team to see the status of claims and take action when performance slips. Otherwise the banks reputation may suffer.

A real challenge is the management of the supply chain where there are so many parties involved and communication often breaks down. The insurer that tackles that challenge effectively (along with effective management of the whole claims lifecycle of course),  is the one that will offer customers better service.

Technology is important, from digital FNOL to customised claims journies for every type of claim from simple to complex; from settling simple claims in hours to complex long-tail claims. But nothing replaces the empathy, skills, commitment and involvement of claims handlers.

Augment them with technology rather than think automation can replace them. One telling stat in Camelot's report is “Across many lines, 30–50% of handlers’ time in claims processing is still consumed by non-value tasks, such as document handling, data entry and chasing suppliers.” 

That's where technology can free up that 30-50% of wasted time. Important when it is increasingly hard to hold on to good people. Make their jobs easier and reward them fairly.

No panacea then but hard work to integrate claims with the whole insurance ecosystem. As Camelot states: -

"Claims data, when connected to underwriting, pricing, and product design, can be a powerful source of competitive intelligence.

Early insight into factors such as peril trends, fraud patterns and inflation can inform more proactive pricing and reserving decisions. Direct feedback from customers and suppliers can highlight product weaknesses or opportunities for innovation. The differentiator isn’t the data itself — it’s how quickly and effectively it can be turned into action to determine who prices in or out of risk ahead of the market. Delivering meaningful action can manifest across product, pricing, underwriting, distribution and more but it’s the Claims data that’s one of the key enablers.”

Read the complete article; Camelot is always ready to help achieve success.