Claim Central Consolidated (CCC) New Zealand country head Jeff Pryde (pictured), whose insurance experience spans four decades, says there has been a positive development in the market. Here the stalwart points to what’s “really paramount” and what he believes the industry should be aspiring to.
Pryde, a loss adjuster by trade, told Insurance Business: “There’s been some good change. We’re now part of the market where we use technology – like the video collaboration tool with Livegenic is becoming a much more acceptable format. There’s been a degree of change, [albeit] it’s taken a couple of years.
“With my background, we always used to go out, clipboard in hand, and do the assessment that way. But after challenging the position for the last two or three years, there seems to be a growing acceptance of using different technologies to complete the assessment process, and triage in particular, to get the claims underway and moving faster.”
Additionally, with challenges surrounding recruitment and the availability of talent in the claims space, the country head said underwriters and brokers alike are starting to explore different ways of moving forward in relation to claims.
“We have been speaking to a number of different underwriters as they move forward looking at what their options are, as opposed to the traditional loss adjusting model,” disclosed the CCC leader, who is originally from Australia but has been in New Zealand for about 16 years now.
“So, we’re working with a number of customers and brokers at the moment, for direct appointment, to manage the claim using technology from the outset whereby you can use one video basically to undertake all those different segments of the claim, which transitions to a better outcome financially and also a better outcome from a lifecycle point of view as well.”
The goal, stressed Pryde, is to get to the claim sooner in a more effective manner.
He stated: “Basically what it is, it’s simplifying the process using technology. I think it’s really paramount… I’ve been in the business for 40 years now in claims and underwriting, and an old saying that I’ve always used is that a claim never gets cheaper the longer it goes on.
“We work in a highly volatile market in New Zealand, with prices going up everywhere. The Consumer Price Index has gone up, I think, 7.5% in the last 12 months. Inflation is getting out of hand. So, if we can get to that claim sooner, [the better] – get to it a month before and get it through the repair process, which is what we’re doing mostly or trying to do mostly at this stage, because people don’t want to be faced with a cash settlement and not being able to locate a builder or understand the limitations with materials.”
“Again,” continued Pryde, “underwriters are assuming that role and brokers want to have their customers protected. So, getting there faster and doing it more effectively reduces the actual costs of the claim and it gives the underwriter a better outcome, the customer a better outcome, and the customer knows that their house has been repaired properly.”
CCC, which became the full owner of cloud-based video solutions provider Livegenic in 2020, is the name behind technology business and platforms brand Wilbur, whose flagship offering is a modular and connectable ecosystem of products for insurance claims and repairs.
“I think the big word for me for the next couple of years will probably be ‘collaboration,’ so more collaboration,” Pryde told Insurance Business. “I know that, for instance, one of our partners has just picked up Wilbur Claims Manager as their management tool. They’re a motor underwriter.
“The ability to transition and work more effectively and independently, and the opportunities that Wilbur Claims Manager [presents] with Wilbur Repair, Wilbur Connect, Wilbur Inspect, and Livegenic... it doesn’t have to be through Claim Central. They can use the tool and all the variations that we have, to use the video.”
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The NZ boss added: “Everyone that we use [the video] with – and we supply copies over to and access to – they love the opportunity. They use it to explain to brokers why they’re declining a claim, and they use it to understand what the trades or services or restoration or make-safe requirements are, because you don’t need to go to see what’s going on. So, it actually transitions the claim really quickly.
“And we get signoff via video; we get signoff online for payment for the excess. Every claim element we collaborate on and we’re sharing that data with the broker, the customer, and the underwriter simultaneously, while also the builder and trade suppliers. So, the signoff is no longer the customer saying ‘I’m happy’; it’s still the customer saying they’re happy, but with a video from that supplier confirming the quality of the repair that’s been completed.”
Moving forward, Pryde believes technology will have another crucial role to play beyond claims.
“The next thing that I’m really excited about is that if we’re using the video and we’re actually providing that data, we should be pushing it back via the underwriter, through to the underwriters in the actual business, to actually see the quality of what the property looks like.
“Is there any issue there that needs to be addressed? Are they underinsured based on what they can see in that video? What is the quality of the property? Is there any inherent maintenance issue that needs to be addressed? These are all things that improve the quality of the risk by almost a stealth nature by actually having access to that video.”
On the issue of tech adoption, meanwhile, the industry veteran described change as something that people don’t love.
He declared: “They sit there and they want to argue with it, but once they’ve had a taste of it and they’ve seen it, they are really converted very quickly. So, it’s about performance, really. At the end of the day, the key criteria, the KPIs (key performance indicators) and SLAs (service level agreements), still stand true; you just need to make sure that you’re delivering all those aspects of the claim.”
“On some occasions you do need to go to site, and we still do that,” Pryde went on to note. “But on most occasions you don’t. During the floods down in Westport about 12 months ago, we settled a contents claim within 24 hours – came in, looked at it, saw it. The sum insured was breached; everyone played their part, including the broker and the underwriter.
“And the [claimant] was about to go in for an operation and he had that money in the bank. He was just blown away how quickly we could do that, using the technology, with his son-in-law taking the video for us on his behalf. And the broker loved it; it’s on their website. That’s the sort of thing that we should be aspiring to more often.”
