Carla McDonald is director of product management for claims and Kajal Vakas is senior manager of claims at LexisNexis Risk Solutions
When you know more about the customer and the risk at the point of FNOL through actionable data, you can determine the right next steps to expedite the claim and support the customer in the way they want
There is little doubt the insurance industry will need to adopt a ‘data first’ approach to provide effective claims management processes in the future. ‘Data first’ focuses on using data enrichment to have automated processes in place that speed up necessary elements of the claims journey but allow insurers to have the ‘human touch’ to support customers. Why is this key? With regulation of pricing by the Financial Conduct Authority, insurance providers need to focus on the elements of their service they can control. Greater automation of some aspects of the claims process can drive efficiencies, lower costs and streamline services at a time when the claims experience will become much more of a competitive differentiator, and data will be the enabler to achieve this.
The additional and more urgent factor to consider from an efficiency perspective is the current number of claims job vacancies in the sector. A report by Vacancysoft found that claims vacancies hit an all-time high in January 2022, with the sector publishing nearly 400 vacancies.
Putting data first may take a change in mindset. Data already held within the organisation will need to be examined, alongside external data sources to gain a 360-degree view of risk, speed up the claims process and provide exceptional customer support. For example, in a property claim, claims professionals should consider data they already hold on the policyholder first: are they a long-term customer? Have they or do they have several policies with the brand—commercial, pet, travel, motor as well as home? Have they had a claim on one of those policies? They need to be able to join the dots.
Those questions can be answered quickly when you have built a single customer view through linking and matching disparate customer data and assigning a unique ID such as LexID for Insurance. This single, consolidated view can then keep building as the claim progresses and can be enriched with external data sources such as past claims data gathered from across the market to help identify whether this new claim could be linked to fraud. Insurance providers must be careful not to fall into the trap of collecting enough data to gain a