Aon Benfield partners with CLARA

Aon Benfield, the global reinsurance intermediary and capital advisor of Aon, has established a partnership with CLARA analytics to deliver cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) tools to workers’ compensation insurers in the US to help employees return to work as quickly as possible, while decreasing loss ratios and improving operational efficiency.

Research from CLARA has found that just 5 to 10 percent of claims drive 90 percent of the costs. Delayed identification of these priority cases can lead to unnecessary litigation and prolonged medical treatment: for example, attorney involvement can increase the cost per claim by more than $25,000.

To address this challenge, CLARA and Aon Benfield have partnered to help claims operations rapidly make the right decisions for injured workers through predictive analytics and AI. The tools include PUMA, which rapidly connects injured workers to the right medical providers; and CATT, to help claims managers focus their team’s effort in just a few minutes on priority cases that have the highest potential to have variability in customer experience and economic outcomes to the carrier. This is based on machine learning algorithms that provide insights through ‘pattern recognition’ based on the dataset.

George deMenocal, president and CEO of Aon Benfield US, said: “For carriers balancing C-suite and board level interest in innovation and cost management, CLARA can be a quick and easy win with minimal impact to expenses. CLARA’s analytics will be complemented by Aon InPoint to improve claims outcomes and develop AI platforms to gain operational efficiencies for insurers.”

In addition to supporting insurers, the partnership is also delivering benefits for corporate companies with self-insured retentions that provide direct support to their employees.

CLARA’s tools are designed to adapt easily into an insurer’s or company’s existing claims workflow while reducing costs to provide a notable return on investment. This is a core part of Aon and CLARA’s joint distribution strategy, combining mutually complementary resources, to optimise the value created using CLARA’s tools for Aon’s clients, prospects and trading partners.

Paul Mang, the global CEO of analytics for Aon, noted: “The ability of Aon Benfield to bring the power of CLARA analytics to its clients is a great example of how Aon is partnering in the insurtech space.

“Aon’s innovation process goes well beyond developing new value propositions with its existing data and tools—we are working actively with the best ideas coming from universities, startups and other large organisations to collaboratively bring products and services to our clients.

“We believe this open architecture innovation model will provide us a sustainable advantage as we compete to bring the best ideas to the marketplace.”

Jayant Lakshmikanthan, president of CLARA analytics, added: “We are excited about the opportunity to work with Aon Benfield and empower its clients’ claims teams to transform the way workplace injuries are handled.

“Key decisions such as finding the right doctor for an injury, or prioritising claims, can be tough to make without science-based tools. Our mission is to deliver easy-to-use tools to adjusters and supervisors that are built upon cutting-edge AI technologies.

“The partnership with Aon Benfield will help us realise this mission faster.”

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