Clients want to partner on tech

Carriers and brokers increasingly want their partners to help them leverage data and technology to make them more efficient and offer greater insights into the risks and claims they are grappling with.

That is the view of Tenesha Frazier-Levett, who recently joined claims and outsourcing specialist Crawford & Company as a global relationship leader within the company’s global client development team, from Zurich North America. She has 14 years’ experience in the insurance industry having held positions in underwriting, proposition development and sales.

She joined along with Caroline Pritchard who hails from Zurich Insurance Company in the UK. Pritchard has 25 years’ experience in the sector having also worked at Marsh, Aon UK and JLT Risk Solutions.

Frazier-Levett and Pritchard will work together from Atlanta in the US and London, respectively, to build relationships with carriers and broker clients globally, working with them on their changing needs.

“For us, it is about getting to know the clients better, being flexible, listening and adapting to their needs,” Frazier-Levett said.

She added that it is also important to promote the company’s ‘One Crawford’ ethos, which means customers globally can access its full spectrum of solutions in a seamless way.

Pritchard added: “The important thing is to listen to customers in terms of what they want and how we can complement the technology they are already developing.

“It is all about offering clients greater efficiency but without losing that personal touch. It is about sharing ideas and technology to offer customers greater insights faster.”

She admitted that carriers and brokers are bombarded with information around how they should use technology to stay ahead of the game. The most forward-looking companies are learning to combine the best of what they have with what is offered by the third parties.

“It is about knowledge-sharing and efficiencies so that we can work with clients to examine claims data, for example, and establish insights on loss patterns or to make volume business more efficient,” Pritchard said.

She recounted how one head of technology from a large client told her that response times were now being measured not in days, but minutes. “That is the expectation now,” she said.