Cedric Stephens | Insurers still struggling with tech as customer tool

I read Chairman and CEO of Advanced Integrated Systems, and fellow columnist Doug Halsall’s recent article, ‘Mobile Health Apps for Accident Management’, three times. I had two reasons for doing so.

Would the use of a mobile health app have helped saved the life of the 71-year-old man who recently collapsed and died while waiting to board a flight at the Sangster International Airport? Would such an application, plus the availability of an ambulance on spot and the timely use of tried and tested medical emergency processes by trained persons, have prevented his death? Maybe.

The second reason was subjective. I accompanied a family member to a private hospital a few days ago. Our aim was to discuss an impending surgery with the relative’s physician. He was insured under a group health plan. One of the benefits was surgical costs. Expenses for the procedure were estimated to be in the high six figures.

Because insurers never give claimants signed blank cheques, the policyholder was required to get the insurer to pre-approve the surgery or run the risk of haggling about the costs after they were incurred. Otherwise, he would have to fund the costs and then submit a claim later. The timeline for the pre-approval process was 10 working days.

Mr Halsall’s article did not say if there was an app to solve this problem. Can the regulators push the health insurers to develop an app to work in concert with artificial intelligence to cut the pre-approval process to a few hours?

Another Sunday Gleaner colleague, Yaneek Page, wrote an admirable piece, last month, titled ‘Service Revolution: Time to Rethink How to Prioritise Customers’. Even though it was pitched to small business operators, her comments are relevant to businesses of all sizes.

Her ideas reminded me about the interactions between a first-time claimant and a big, well-established motor insurer’s claims process. The collision was a small and simple fender-bender. Both drivers were insured by the same company. Yet the claim took nine months to be settled.

The customer’s experience was evidence of bad strategies, inefficient processes, and, among other things, poor customer service. As Mrs Page wrote, “a customer-centric business designs their business operations, systems, processes and policies around the needs, experiences and preferences of their customers … experts insist that a truly customer centric business is always striving to develop a deep level of customer intimacy where they know the customer well enough to create a business architecture that serves them”.

Technology is often touted as one of the tools that is used to achieve this goal. Yet, in the case of this insurance company, it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on technology over the last decade without achieving any improvements in its claims process. I was unsurprised to learn a few days ago that the company was put up for sale and that consumers will soon have fewer motor insurers to choose from.

While life and non-life insurers appear to be struggling to use technology ‘to develop a deep level of customer intimacy,’ Advanced Insurance Adjusters has developed a service package – which involves the use various technologies – to help customers to more effectively navigate the motor claims minefield.

Motorists, as a rule, are generally not willing to accept responsibility that their actions or agree that the things that they omitted to do contributed to a motor vehicle accident. It is always the other person’s fault. Some withhold information or tell lies about what happened. Others say one thing in a face-to-face discussion at the scene and something different when required to make an official report to the police or to their insurer. Some drivers are ignorant about the rules of the road and behave as if the accident did not happen.

Insurance company employees who are familiar with the ways motorists try to dodge responsibility and have the contractual right to assign blame when there is an accident, also suffer from a ‘knowledge gap’. These issues lengthen the claims process and cause frustration on the other parties.

Advanced Insurance Adjusters has the capacity to use satellite technology to remotely visit the accident scene anywhere in the island and use that information from reports and create a computer animation or videos of what happened based on the reported facts including the makes of the vehicles and the damage they sustained.

Shouldn’t insurers be using these tools and technologies to manage their claims and help them become more consumer-centric and efficient?

Cedric E. Stephens provides independent information and advice about the management of risks and insurance. For free information or counsel, write to: aegis@flowja.com or business@gleanerjm.com