Insurance Business is gearing up for its IB Innovation Summit in Sydney on May 11. The event features two content streams: InsurTech and Claims Innovation. Both streams bring together industry leaders for panels and presentations that aim to showcase the latest technology, improvements and innovations in these vital insurance industry areas.
IB’s event partner is AAMC, one of Australia’s largest providers of motor accident management services.
“It’s important for us to understand where technology is heading in relation to processing claims and delivering the customer experience, thus we then make sure that we align our services to suit,” said Daniel Lukich (pictured above), AAMC’s sales and strategic relationship manager.
Lukich will deliver welcoming remarks and then a presentation for the claims stream: “Intermediated Claims v Direct – The widening gap: Efficiency, Cost control and Customer experience” will explain how motor claims stakeholders in the intermediated space can bridge the gap between the automation and customer service improvements within personal lines compared to their own sector.
Lukich’s presentation will identify issues within the current motor claims process and explain how technology can help the intermediated space catch up.
“Technology does play a role, though on its own it’s not the silver bullet,” he said. “The ultimate goal in claims is enabling skilled people to play their part effectively with technology taking care of the inefficiencies.”
The idea, he said, is to promote the fact that insurance claims processes need to transition and be more relevant to today’s consumers. AAMC has invested energy and time in trying to convince insurers and motor industry colleagues. Last year, Lukich engaged in stakeholder conversations, media interviews and webinars to detail what AAMC thinks needs to happen.
“Unfortunately, not much has advanced,” he said. “We have peaked a lot of interest and held numerous discussions and no-one is disagreeing that the customer experience, especially for intermediated claims, is not great.”
In fact, he said, the customer experience has “probably diminished” in recent years because of the renewed focus on compliance and protecting personal information. This has led to more delays, he said, in what was already a disconnected and cumbersome motor claims process.
Lukich sees the IB Innovation Summit as an important opportunity to renew his calls for change.
“What I’m wanting to do in this summit, and as a partner, is highlight the widening gap between personal insurance, where through a call centre or an app, or online, you can basically get some claim activity going instantly, but if you’re claiming through an intermediary, it’s slow, clunky and very manual,” he said.
The AAMC motor claims expert said transformation can’t be driven from within insurance company boardrooms. Lukich called on insurers to engage with key stakeholders who work in the claims processing area including intermediaries, suppliers and their own claims staff. He said this would help put the customer “front and centre” and for insurers, “go a long way towards improvement.”
However, he’s concerned that there are major impediments for insurers, including a fear of making mistakes and the financial pressures from being too focused on shareholders.
“I think executives within insurers are fearful of making a mistake and by not ending up on a front page of a newspaper they can feel they’ve had a good result,” said Lukich.
He said this is “stagnating any meaningful change.”
“Also, while the insurers remain profitable, they’ll continue to wear the frustration from customers because the ultimate drivers are financial results,” said Lukich.
He said insurers have moved away from the premise that their prime reason for being is using the small premiums paid by the many to pay the claims of a few.
“The real driver for insurers is profitability,” said Lukich. “That’s forcing a lot of the problems which we are now experiencing.”
He said the technology and capability to transform the motor claims space already exists. However, while insurers are too focused on meeting financial projections, “true transformation remains on the backburner.”
Many industry stakeholders hope the IB Innovation Summit can move insurers towards putting transformation on the frontburner.
IB’s Innovation Summit is taking place on May 11 at the Fullerton Hotel in Sydney. You can register for the event here.
