Insights from The Bridge interactive workshop on ‘timeliness frameworks” at the Claims Leadership Summit in Sydney May 14th. How the workshop participants viewed their current claims performance?

David McDonald, Managing director of The Bridge International facilitated the first workshop at the insurance business news Claims leadership summit on the topic of fast-tracking claims using ‘Timeliness’ frameworks.

David is a leading industry expert in general insurance. In the face of significant claims inflation over the last five years he has lead over a dozen successful claims transformation programs in Australia and North America.

It is with this experience David led the interactive workshop. To understand the current industry view of claims performance, David ran a live survey with the workshop participants, representing the views of some 30 insurers, brokers and service providers. David focused on six “moments that matter”, a practical approach by The Bridge to focusing on critical parts of the claim’s operations to improve customer experience.

David McDonald's interactive workshop at the Claims Leaders' Summit

The results from the workshop were interesting. Workshop participants were asked to rate their company's performance at each key stage of the claims cycle on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is "inefficient and not customer friendly" and 5 is "market leading and best in class”.

As each participant rated their brands performance on their phones, the de-branded and aggregated scores came up in real time on the screen. The highest collective rating was for the lodgement experience (3.7 out of 5), followed by claims settlement, repair management, assessment, claims management, and lastly claims Triage (3.2 out of 5)

Aggregated and de-branded results from the workshop

David said, in response to these results, “It is good to see lodgement rating well as the first major step in the process. It has a big impact on how the customer will rate the overall experience, as we know first impressions count. However, it was interesting that triage performance was rated last, given this is a key output of the lodgement process in driving timeliness and fundamental to fast tracking the claim.”

David went on to say that these rating by the workshop participants didn’t surprise him, as he has seen significant investment by insurers in omni channel lodgement, but not as much focus on capturing all the data required to optimise the triage process, both from the customer, insurer and service providers.

“Data from the whole claim’s ecosystem is key to optimising triage. There is also a practical opportunity now to leverage AI to rapidly analyse this data and generate predictive outcomes to inform and guide triage, especially on complex claims. However the AI is only a good as the data it can access.”

David went on to say that this self-assessment of the industry is interesting, but that there are still gaps between how the insurance ecosystem sees their own performance compared to the actual ratings from the customer. Customers now benchmark their insurance experience with other industries who deliver exceptional customer service.

“In the recent CPM customer experience survey, the insurance industry was rated third to last out of 14 industries, below banking and financial services, online-only retailers and the travel and airline industries. Insurance only rates in this survey ahead of utilities and the lowest performer – government services.

David discussed the steps to move from a traditional claims operating model to a contemporary model, looking at the change process through The Bridge Triple play - culture, customer and commercial.

David added “A customer first approach is well understood, but it is the cultural shift that drives sustainable change. If you get the customer and culture right, the commercials will follow, and the improved results will stick.”

In addition to the triple play, David outlined how The Bridge applied its “5 T’s” design principles: Triage, Timeliness, Transparency, Trust and Terms.

David McDonald presenting the 5T's design principles for a contemporary claims model

“It is so important that the claims operation service providers are an extension of the claims team, true partners in all senses of the word. Trust combined with the right terms with the service providers will lead to more transparency and data share. Their data can contribute to optimising triage and the performance of other moments that matter in the claims operation.”

David discussed some case studies of claims transformation that The Bridge has led in a leading motor and home insurer, leading commercial lines insurer and a health insurer, which showed how quickly claims performance and timeliness can improve, applying the methodologies shared in the workshop.

David concluded, “In one leading insurance client we saw property claims cycle time drop from an average 78 days to 36 days in the first 6 months of operationalising the contemporary model and applying the 5T’s. This improvement in timeliness led to a decrease in average repair cost of 30% and a significant improvement in customer and employee NPS. A tick for customer, culture and commercials.

Some of the summit participants who attended the workshop also received a proprietary Express Customer Score Card from CXO2, The Bridge’s specialist CX consulting business. This provides brands with a summary of how customers are rating their experience, sourced from independent public reviews and other aggregated sources.