The Property and Casualty insurer-insured relationship begins with the assurance of providing a good coverage for a good price; but, it is the handling of a customer’s claim that can most dramatically strengthen or diminish an insurance provider’s brand equity. Good marketing and sales may make you satisfy the customer queries, but the moment of truth occurs at the time a claim is made.

Driving Competitive Excellence in Property and Casualty Claims Management

• No longer just a means to fulfill contractual obligations, claims processes have become a key battleground to drive competitive excellence as more and more providers seek to differentiate themselves from their competitors as a way to retain existing customers and attract new ones.

• Challenged by slow industry growth rate, P & C insurers are investing in insurance service providers to strength their claim handling channel and establishing an aggressive presence in their service lines. But still, the customer loyalty is fragile.

• Insurance companies are looking to differentiate themselves and support their brand strategies with claims management as a cornerstone.

To drive this competitive excellence, the time has come for a strategic partner approach that increases the value of your existing resources, leveraging an enterprise view of the customer, strengthening supply chain Management, implementing innovative approaches to customer care, and increasing productivity to efficiently and accurately adjudicate claims.

Claims Management: A Combination of Outsourcing and Revenue Building Approach

For every Property and Casualty insurer, the claims process has evolved from merely writing a check into a complex value chain that includes a colorful combination of outsourced services and a revenue building approach.

Some of the claim managers would acknowledge that they actually outsource these processes, instead of using the word vendors. Not unexpectedly, this mindset has led to the unintended result where the evolution has resulted in just as many one-off solutions as vendors, where carriers have disconnected these providers from their core claims process and systems.

For claims handlers, this lack of integration results in claims files that are incomplete, difficult to access or share, and processes that are disconnected and broken. For customers, this lack of cohesion often results in erratic customer service levels impacting satisfaction.

The need to improve claims management is clear, but claim managers are handicapped by the current state of their legacy systems and processes. To compete, insurance organizations carriers must assert stewardship over the entire claims management life cycle, including integrating the supply chain with claims adjudication. Orchestrating processes through insurance service providers who are part of the preferred supply chain that oversee and intervene in streamlining the entire property and casualty claims life cycle.