Boosting the Claims Process Efficiency
Everyone knows the 80-20 rule, yet applying it directly to the claim resolution process, it would be rather easy to point out which claim handling efforts take 80% of time, but produce only 20% of the results.
Let’s take it further. The item identified as the answer for the prior paragraph is also very likely to consume 80% of the annual budget in addition to the effort. The logical question is whether this expensive, difficult, and frustrating effort worth tackling? What if instead of tackling this effort, there was another option to acquire quick gains in both, reduction of claim related costs, improvement of customer and employee satisfaction, and reduction of fraud related risks? Would it make sense to try it?
The truth is that the claims process itself is the main culprit in being able to achieve the best and optimal efficiency necessary for reducing the costs and improving customer experience. The good news, however, is that it can be quickly boosted.
The claims process by its very definition is very inefficient. It involves numerous parties and hence goes through many cycles in collection, verification, and assessment of the information. However, looking at the many very basic principles of the process optimization, such as the one taught by Six Sigma, if the “pieces” are in front of you, it is easy to complete the task.
The fact is that the collection, assessment, and verification of the information is the primary area where insurance carriers struggle in establishing a repeatable claim process. After all, every claim is different, so depending on its complexity, the gathering of the information and its validation takes a different amount of time. Therefore, handling this challenge means being able to boost efficiency and productivity.
Many carriers are turning to real-time visual technology to deliver this type of significant boost and improvement to the claim process. Real-time visual technology enables customers to provide accurate visual information for verifying and assessing the damage during the very first notice of loss. The collection of information offered by some of these systems occurs simultaneously through video recording and replay capabilities. These systems also offer many fraud detection mechanisms that can help mitigate the risks. All of these great features combined produce a very significant benefit – helping insurance carriers quickly gather all of the pertinent information to quickly validate and process the claim and put all of the “pieces” in front of the claims manager.
The best part is that real-time visual damage assessment during the first notice of loss is not a dream tech. This inexpensive technology already exists and it can be tried and tested to help assess its immediate benefits for your organization, with some organizations even being able to onboard their customers with out of the box solutions to deliver value in less than 24 hours.
The question is where does this fall within your priority list? What makes up your organization’s 80-20 rule and which initiatives can be shuffled around to get 80% improvement with only 20% of effort?