Kennedys and University of Manchester to develop fraud prevention software

Kennedys and the University of Manchester are teaming up to develop fraud prevention software for global insurers.

The two-year project, set to launch after Kennedys and the University of Manchester secured funding from the Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership, will see the law firm use its existing fraud expertise and international data sets to develop machine learning techniques.

These will then be used to help its global insurer clients to better detect and manage fraud.

Kennedys partner Richard West explained: “Kennedys has been developing online legal services for many years in the form of the Kennedys toolkit, which has seen significant client traction and recognition from a number of industry awards.”

“Our aim is to continually use technology to challenge existing practice and to help our clients use lawyers less.”

Martin Stockdale, head of the counter fraud unit and partner at Kennedys, has undertaken extensive work in this area already. He said of the new project: “We have been developing our market-leading fraud product for a number of years and we now bring world-leading cognitive computing expertise into the business to take us to the next generation and beyond.”

Among the experts from the University of Manchester who will be working with Kennedys are Jian-Bo Yang, Professor of Decision and System Sciences and Director of the Decision and Cognitive Sciences Research Centre (DCSRC), and Dong Ling Xu, Professor of Decision Science and Support Systems.

Professor Yang commented: “We are confident that we can help Kennedys improve its current system. The key is to try and develop a hybrid system where you can use both big data and human knowledge in deep learning to tackle the problem, which we call transparent machine learning. In this way you can explain exactly why you reach your decisions. It is evidence-based, transparent decision-making.”

The two-year project is the latest development in an overall strategy to develop an insurance legal services platform that covers the lifecycle of a claim from inception to settlement, according to Karim Derrick, project director and head of research and development.

Derrick added: “At the heart of that platform is data. We are combining our legal expertise, our toolkit products, our aggregated data and now cognitive computing expertise from a world-leading university to deliver a business service that is much greater than the sum of its parts.”

Claims Media