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Reducing Costs, Compliance Woes and Customer Dissatisfaction with Distributed Claims Processing
Inefficient property and casualty (P&C) claims processing doesn't just increase your operational costs; it can also cost you customers. In an industry where consumers are bombarded with catchy advertising touting the lowest prices and superior service, P&C carriers that want to retain customers, remain profitable and meet existing and potential compliance requirements should evaluate distributed scanning as a means to increase the effectiveness of claims processing. For carriers who work with brokers or agents, these concerns are compounded by the need to maintain commissions and support those partners with positive customer experiences or risk being selected against.

Getting claims and supplemental documents to claims underwriters sooner by transmitting them electronically from the regional offices, broker offices or independent adjusters by capturing them at the point of creation can significantly improve the bottom line and customer satisfaction. Insurers relying on paper-based manual processes or a centralized document capture and processing department experience the following disadvantages:

• High shipping costs
• Delays that affect customer satisfaction and the ability to comply with mandated time constraints
• Lack of visibility into claim status for customers, management and examiners
• A disconnect between various information sources such as digital photos, paper forms and the
• claims management system
• No mechanism for accountability

If a policy holder is in an automobile collision, for example, the assigned claims representative, whether an employee of the carrier, an independent agent or a contract employee, must submit a prescribed set of documents to the claims underwriters following a notice of loss. Perhaps this list includes a claims form, digital or actual photographs, estimates and police reports. In a paper-based or centralized process, these items must be packaged and shipped, at some expense, to a central location, perhaps hundreds of miles away. This may take a matter of several days or require an even more expensive overnight shipping alternative.

Assuming the packet arrives safely and on time, some procedure must be in place to link the electronic items such as digital photos (e.g. printing, burning them to a CD, sending them to a file server or directory and hoping they get assigned to the file) to the physical file. Because of the risks, the claims representative will often copy the documents prior to shipping, incurring additional costs for paper, copier maintenance, filing and storage space.

If an item is missing from the claim file, the entire packet may be sent back for completion to avoid having items get separated and relieve processing staff of the burden of filing, storing and tracking these files. Now the file has been delayed that much longer, additional costs have been incurred and allotted processing time is ticking away.

Meanwhile, the policy holder calls the agent or the call center to inquire about the status of the claim and receives only a vague response because it is unclear if the claims representative has the file and what work has been done. Perhaps a customer service representative spends valuable time trying to track down the physical file and respond to the inquiry hours or even days later. Various parties may blame the delays on each other, but management and examiners have no conclusive means for identifying bottlenecks or researching the action taken on the file.

 
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