The anticipation of a shift in roles and responsibilities, fears of job elimination, and hesitance to adapt to new processes can be disruptive to the culture and create implementation roadblocks. Digital transformation projects, taking place in claims departments across the insurance sector, have caused many pain points for claims executives, middle managers and adjusters.
In April of 2021, Deluxe conducted a roundtable with claims executives of medium and large carriers to discuss the challenges these professionals faced, as well as the effective strategies available for successful transformation. The anonymized insights from these candid discussions are shared within this brief.
Executives highlighted cultural acceptance of innovation in claims handling as the most significant challenge faced during transformative projects. Three scenarios, shared by roundtable participants, offer challenges to cultural acceptance within the claims department:
For roundtable participants, the successful part of their digital strategy included:
When rolling out new tech, is the goal to bring it across an entire organization, or is it to start in a small area first and “land and expand?” Determine the best strategy for implementation through evaluation of the potential gains and areas where the greatest value can be achieved. Most carriers introduced innovation to a single department or team, and once fully vetted, some carriers took the ‘light switch’ approach, while others expanded slowly across departments or products.
An innovation advisor to one large carrier identified the greatest need for automated payments in auto theft claims “because nobody needs to make a payment more urgently than people who don’t have a car and have to buy one this weekend…” Once vetted, automated payments were introduced to homeowners, where total loss required equal urgency. By identifying the employees and the policyholders most likely to embrace the digital payment platform, implementation was successful. One large carrier initially released enhancements to virtual payments within a small group of adjusters, focused on medical claim payments and one new payment option. The enhancement was vetted for one month, then the carrier “flipped the light switch” and rolled out an array of payment options across other departments. The speed of adoption has been attributed largely to COVID and the necessity to meet both employee and policyholder needs.
Roundtable participants agreed customers continue to experience ‘uncertainty’ in the claims experience, regardless of the technology they interact with. Despite offers for self-service, there remains a reliance upon adjuster interaction for reassurance. The digital channel lacks the capability to instill confidence and eliminate uncertainty the way a first-class adjuster can. This leads to a desire to speak to an adjuster or claims representative, despite how easy carriers may make the digital process.
Claims representatives and adjusters are challenged by too many non-integrated solutions. Over time, departments have introduced a series of solutions that have not been integrated with the core claims system. An adjuster may have five different systems to access separately. Often a solution, such as a texting platform or estimating software is piloted and funded, but not to the full extent that the project includes end-to-end integration with the core claims system.
Download the complete eBook to read more insights from the roundtable discussion about the change management techniques, challenges and strategies for digitizing claims.
