Staking a claim: first movers will be the winners in the digital revolution

“There’s change happening all around us, and that change is going to separate winners and losers,” according to Jeff Saye, global practice leader for insurance claims at Genpact.

“The ones who are open and drive change in their own organisation are those who are going to be a step ahead,” Saye said during an interview with Intelligent Insurer.com, the website and digital hub for news, interviews, analysis and debate.

This change isn’t just the result of the COVID-19 pandemic; it was already coming, he said. He has been with the New York-headquartered firm for over a decade, leading claims transformation initiatives across Asia-Pacific, EMEA and the US.

“Up to 2020, we didn’t have to convince anybody in the industry that there was a digital revolution. They could clearly see that,” Saye said. There was, however, uncertainty about when and where to start that meant many had held back. The pandemic forced their hand.

“Some carriers had already set off on their digital journey, and they went through the pandemic exceedingly well because they were well positioned, but we started having conversations with those that hadn’t started, to get them on their journey,” he explained.

The industry has been guided by disruption from the insurtech sector.

“The insurance industry is not known to be on the bleeding edge of digital innovation. Many times insurers have waited to see what’s going to happen before they feel comfortable,” Saye said, referring to the impact of new market entrants such auto insurer Root and home insurer Hippo, both heavily tech-enabled.

“They are completely disrupting things, so now you have traditional insurance carriers saying: ‘For us to keep up with that, we’re going to have to disrupt our own operation’.

“Those willing to do so will be the leaders in future,” he said.

Consequently, while differences remain across businesses, with organisations contending with their specific challenges, local regulations or infrastructure limitations, carriers across the world are now all moving the same way.

“They’re just at different maturity stages of that journey,” said Saye.

Taking the best on offer

The fact that innovation is coming from both within and outside the sector is reflected in Genpact’s flagship claims solution, Claims Manager ( www.genpact.com/cora/claims-manager).

It provides an end-to-end workflow, from first notice of loss through coverage verification, adjudication, and all the way through to recovery and closing, but it is highly configurable and modular, allowing users to configure it to their practices and integrate it with their own technology.

It’s also built to harness innovations into the solution—wherever they come from.

“The best part about Claims Manager is the open architecture and the API layer,” said Saye. “We’re able to future-proof our technology by bringing the best-of-breed insurtechs into our own technology stack.”

The goal is to bring to claims the experience that disrupters such as Hippo and Root have brought customers in other parts of the insurance life cycle.

“Their experience, through acquisition and policy servicing, is touchless—it’s all digital, and there hasn’t been a human intervention throughout that entire process,” explained Saye. “When it gets to the claim process, it needs to be the same way.”

But there are still opportunities for improvement, he admits. Data extraction and ingestion is automated so that relevant information from incoming documents can be drawn into the claim file. However, human appraisal is still required to make decisions such as repair against replacement.

The solution’s open architecture means Genpact can draw on evolving technology to change this. It is already partnering with companies such as Safekeep, which applies artificial intelligence and data to claims subrogation, and Claim Genius, which uses artificial intelligence and computer vision to help make better auto claims decisions.

“Our data layer and our open APIs can bring in all these partners to deliver a seamless touchless claim experience for the policyholder,” he said.

In time, that should mean most claims will be handled entirely digitally.

“What we’ve set out to do is create a claims process where the human intervention would be an exception. We want a completely seamless process that can flow all the way through without a human touchpoint,” he explained.

That doesn’t make the people redundant, however. If anything, it will mean claims managers becoming more valuable, especially in an industry already struggling a talent shortage even before the “Great Resignation”. Freed from the manual tasks of the traditional process, they’ll be able to focus on what really matters when it comes to the claim: the customer making it.

“In future the claims adjuster role won’t just be about adjudication or decision-making,” Saye concluded. “It is going to be about making sure they are taking care of the client.”

Jeff Saye is global practice leader for insurance claims at Genpact. He can be contacted at: jeffrey.saye@genpact.com