Discover why Blueprint Two, delivering a customer centric claims experience and effectively leveraging technology & data are key challenges for London Market claims.
Ben Bolton, MD and founder of Gracechurch Consulting and Jeremy Burgess from TIN assess the key findings from this years London Market Claims annual pre-event survey. They discuss the implications and challenges surrounding:
- The Future at Lloyd's and the implications for claims
- How you deliver and measure a customer centric claims service
- The role of digital technology and data to enable tomorrows claims experience
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Transcript:
Jeremy Burgess: Right - let us move on to, as I said at the top of the show, the results of the pre-event survey for London Market Claims. This survey goes out to all the attendees who are coming along in a couple of weeks time, and we asked them what they would like to get out of the event; what they would like to get out of individual sessions. I pull the research together: it is quite interesting because most of it is verbatim and quotes, and it gives us a sense of where the claims community are 'feeling the pain' - what's on their mind and top of the agenda. So we've called out three areas that we'd like to talk about from the results of the survey, and the first one, Ben, I'm going to start with it - is that if you look through the survey and flick through so you can see the types of of comments that are on there, there's a whole bunch here around the Future at Lloyd's session, and there appears to be a thirst for knowledge - still - about the road map, what the implications are for claims, what the implications are for internal organizations in terms of that, their operating model, the cost of it, what they're going to have to do on a technology basis in order to play into it. So, I mean, you could just take a take a few quotes, but just looking at them - where are Lloyd's market? Where does Lloyd's market see the development of a quick, slick claims process? I mean, that's pretty fundamental. We we've talked about this on the show, and perhaps this is just reinforcing our position that we're not too sure what's happening. We're not too sure what's being developed to not sure where we are, I suppose.
Ben Bolton: Okay. So I've done a bit of digging and two things. One is notably the various consultants in this market who comment on these things are notably quiet, so there's nothing coming through to them. So I think that's probably symptomatic of a job done in the comms, the communications. Secondly, I had a look at Lloyds websites. I picked up from there what I think is their latest updates, and so - in brief - we've got the intelligent market reform contract that's going on, but that's obviously a big thing, that is computable contracts, as they call them - I get that's a big deal: it's about placement and all that sort of thing. So that seems to be just ... happening, but it's in consultation mode, DA Claims Status Tracker - t's called DCA, that's one we've heard about before. We know that's basically tracking it's it's information software and AI on board road tracking. Essentially, it doesn't do anything as far as I can tell. It just tracks information, price transparency. So I don't think that was probably that difficult to do. I don't do it myself, but I don't reckon it was that difficult, but that's the thing. So when we get to the more meaty stuff - claims data standards, which I'm, I like that idea; I think it's good, it's boring and dull, but it seems to be sensible to get that sort of basics right based on a court guidelines, which is mentioned in some of the comments there in the survey that's now been reviewed by market participants. So it does that does seem to have been some kind of movement back and forth on that. But again, it's sitting out there, it's in consultation, it's in review. The only bit of timetable that I can say, really not the only bit, but one of the key bits relating to claims is around claims stuff being delivered between 2022 and 2024. So it's not exactly specific; in fact it's very unspecific. Some things have been what they call rescinded. In other words, dropped - just says we were going to do three things - one of them got rescinded and two are happening. But there's no sort of accountability as again was asked for in that. So why did that get dropped? So things can just disappear, I think, off the face of the Lloyd's earth. The pilot again, which is mentioned that a fast claims pilot that seems to have been running and now I believe it's been launched market wide, but I couldn't quite understand what that meant in reality. It says some players have signed up for it and you can sign up for it. But why don't we just have a "There are now 25 players signed up" or "There are two players signed up" or "There are ten"? Well, what - are they trying to hide something? It's a simple thing - faster claims. What they say is faster claims processing is here and it's great, so they claim 4450 payments were done in the pilot totaling $16 million, and ... good! But if its so good, why isn't everybody signing up for it? I'm just asking the questions. Then the other thing is I-Cross core digital claims solution - that's the whole thing that's based off the core data recorder code - again it's mentioned that it seems to be a going out for more consultation, more review. Some movement seems to have happened according to the Lloyd's website. But it's not very specific. So, again, we're in a sort of ... non-specific world of ... "It's all going very well, we're all talking about it, it's being reviewed by all sorts of people" ... but ... I if I was the person running it, I'd say, what specifically is happening? Can you give me confidence that there's a deliverable date? If it was my business, I think if it was your business you'd say the same thing - "This all sounds very nice ... " I've sat in so many meetings in my business life where people say "We are all talking about this, Ben, we're doing this and it's great, and we had a chat the other day with such and such" - it often feels to me like that's the excuse for what will come. It's just, yeah, we're not quite ready to launch or to do anything yet.
Jeremy Burgess: That is a really good point that you make around communications, not just from Lloyd's, but the commentators that we respect - the OXBOs and people like that - they haven't had anything to to comment on because otherwise they would have done it because it's in their interests and they've got expertize in the area. So I think at the conference I think all of those questions that you put up and the ones in the pre-event survey that I'm looking in front of here, I think it'd be good to put to Lloyd's and that panel and just see if we can get some clarity around some fairly basic questions.
Ben Bolton: Yes I agree with that.
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Jeremy Burgess: So the second point that comes out strongly in the the pre-event survey that we wanted to highlight is this shift away from thinking about claims processes and streamlining of efficiency to actually bring in the the customer to the conversation. I'm not going to go as far as to say that the customer is at the center of every single decision that's being made at the moment. But at least what's coming through from the comments in this survey is that people are looking at changing claims processes in order to deliver a better client or customer outcomes. And I think that that is really, really positive. The next step then is how do you how do you measure that? And that comes through really strongly in these results in that how do it how do we measure value delivered above and beyond the monetary?
Ben Bolton: I mean, it's a very good point. And I think we should pick those. I want to know just go back to that first claims payment. Okay. So that's an announcement. That is a pience of technology that enables faster payments. Great. Big deal. 4450 payments totalling 60 Minutes. Those must have ended up in customers bank accounts at some point. Why have we not got something that says the customer said, "I was delighted! This is a big difference. I'll now spend all of my money, my insurance money with Lloyds, because this is great!" You don't have to have absolute measures or quantified things. You could just have a few customer comments or case studies or things. So I think this is the time - it's crazy that we haven't got it so far, and the reason it's crazy is because - it's what we've said before - is that everything now is measured by a technological timeframe with milestones, which means that the technology people are still in charge of this, basically. And as much as I love them, most of them don't understand the first thing about customer needs in this market, and that's a major step. You said it's controversial, but it's true. And I think a lot of them would admit that we want to work with organizations to understand their customer needs so we can deliver solutions. Right. Good friends like Bart Patrick would agree with that. But we're still in this. "The technology people are managing the process. Lloyds is management. The bureaucracy is is the dominant force here." So what we're measuring on is milestones in various documents and things. So that's why with the frustration comes to us, what's happening? Why is it not happening that you could start to say, why don't we open this up? Maybe we should ask this question. Why don't we open this up and ask whether there were customer benefits accruing? Because I can tell you that if you start to see. Articles or papers or things that said his you know - "Here's DHL", let's just say "DHL got 5 million payments a year and claims things. And they get very frustrated when they're you know, they're waiting months for these things. But this is sped up their process by this and it's enabled them as a business to invest in such and such and such and such and get their customers happy". So it'd be great, because then people could visualize what they call 'End-to-end', now - in this language that technologists use, they use 'End-to-end' a lot, so when they talk about end-to-end, they don't mean end-to-end. They may 'End-to-end ... within the London market', and If you look at the process and how it's laid out End-to-end is a claims person and an insurer pays a claim, which - that's not 'End-to-end'. That's a tiny part of the value chain and it does not include the customer. I think End-to-end is: the person gets the money, goes and has a beer or a glass of wine because they got the claim paid, and then they think, "What can I do with this to enable my business to be more successful?" So I think it's right that we should focus on outcomes now that really strongly, that's the sort of thing we should start - I hope we can talk about the conference because at the moment it's just not in play at all in any of the official documentation. To some extent I can understand it and I'll be forgiving of this complicated process and it's quite difficult and you have to take your time and do some things behind closed doors. But as far the where we are, they're in this process where we are in the world of things that the consumer due to which is already going to be in place. And happening and it's going to start next year. And it does include a huge amount of Lloyds business commercial contracts and commercial customers. Lloyd's is going to be, we are going to be, in some sticky place if this is not starting to be delivered, you know, potentially. So this is not a nicety. And I don't think that these I think. I don't think whoever's doing all of this I mean, some of the people I don't think they have the luxury of time. No. And I don't think that's I don't think that's an agenda that set by Lloyd's or the market or costs. I think it's set by the customer expectation. And I think that's a much bigger and and the regulator tied into that. So I think that's a much bigger issue for the market coming down the road, really. So I think that's a really important one that we should try and get some answers on.
Jeremy Burgess: And I think I'm I think what these results kind of play to is that it's becoming more important, you know, in in these claims directors minds as well. So I think that is that is a positive. But yeah, tons of questions I'm sure we'll be asking at the conference. The final thing that we wanted to draw out of this survey was the kind of the role of technology, I suppose, and some of the comments that are coming out of the survey are certainly about not if but when, you know that that conversation has shifted. We've seen, I think it was Gallagher Re a couple of weeks ago issuing a press release where they are put out they signed a deal to upgrade that their core systems. Now that would be a big deal so and that will encompass claims because it has to. So so we're starting to see it come back to our first point about the Blueprint Two and then kind of the lack of things being delivered, we are starting to see the kind of individual organizations, a move to transform that legacy estate and just to be just to be better than before, know not to change the world and the universe, but just to do some things to come back to your points around customer. But that just shifts the dial slightly on the metrics for for customer satisfaction and efficiency.
Ben Bolton: Yeah, I agree. I think we've said this before that there's a lot now that's going on and lots of different things and some will succeed and some won't. That's fine and that's exactly how it should be. I think you're right. This critical mass has a lot going on. I think the philosophy has changed a little bit. I think that Bart Patrick/Genesis talked a bit about that as to looking at not a great transformational projects, but small projects that make a difference and in aggregate that improves the whole. I think that's exactly the right way to think about these things. Bite sized chunks. At the market level. We're still working. To an extent with those great transformational ideas, concepts around technology. But some of those, I think it's fair enough, like core data, record or data, that they're the sorts of things that probably you do need to have market standards. And I personally think that's both understandable and I'd sort of be supportive of it. Not that anybody would care that I supported it or not, but I would be because I think a good idea, those basics need to be done right across the markets. No point getting everybody to just try and do it singly. And so there's a bit of tension I think. But like Lloyds has largely ditched anything that was visionary in technology (if we talk about London) - there's this, it's all basic stuff now, and I think, as you say, there are organizations that are taking it upon themselves to , push forward, ready to innovate and be different. MaybeI can't yet use the word 'innovate', but I'll chuck it in there just for fun. I think that, you know, they are doing things and they see things that they can do and they see possibilities. So that's the good thing. So I think competition, Sequel Six - all these different groupings, if you like - have things going on fueled by ideas and there's an impetus to that. So I think that is true. I think it creates its own momentum, which is what you're asking. I think and I think it does seem to have that momentum and. The questions that come up. I think then going back to the customer things and the outcomes are inevitable because you've we're moving through a kind of phased evolution of the market. And while we might be critical or questioning of parts of that, ultimately the question is, is it moving all in the right direction no matter how long that will take? I'd say probably yes. And the survey is reflective of that opportunity. Competitive threats, whatever you call it, of of actually a base of a whole industry that is becoming or having to become more attuned to the customer's needs and outcomes. So yeah, I think it's probably pretty. Creating its own momentum to some extent. I mean, what do you do these days? We don't have a digital offering as part of what you do. I mean, that's okay. So technology is intrinsically part of any service offering or any kind of proposition, if you like, business propositions. So it's it's it's unsurprising. But I think people are embracing it and investing in it a bit more. And yeah, so it's probably going in the right direction, I'd say.
Jeremy Burgess: So three points coming out of the market pre-event survey and Market Claims Prevention Blueprint to sow further implications for claims and that shift towards more client-centricity, especially around measurement - how do we do that? And then technology, automation and all that good stuff as well. So so things that perhaps we could have guessed that. But it's nice to see that the survey is backing those up and gives us lots of food for thought and questions to answer at the conference in a couple of weeks time. So thank you everybody for filling that in and I hope you found that valuable.
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