In today’s landscape of escalating lawsuit costs and economic uncertainty, managing litigation severity has become a critical challenge for claims departments (see Social Inflation is up). The question is: how can we effectively address this issue without compromising efficiency or breaking the bank? Let’s explore a data-driven, technology-powered approach to litigation management that can help…
Swiss Re’s latest report on social inflation is a must-read for claims professionals. Their sigma No 4/2024 study, “Litigation costs drive claims inflation: indexing liability loss trends,” offers a comprehensive look at this growing challenge. The findings are sobering: the U.S. liability risk pool is expanding rapidly, with commercial casualty insurance sector losses growing at…
There are many elements to a well run claims department. As with many areas of business it comes down to people, process and technology. Good people will drive the success of any department and working with defined efficient processes, as well as technology tools that support the organization, are basic core requirements to any well run department. Specifically what people, processes and technology make up a good claims department is a subject for another day. Regardless every claims department should be using metrics, performing audits and have a business continuity plan in place as a minimum. Take our survey too and let’s see what companies are doing on these three.
All things being equal there are many fine TPAs in the market that will provide wonderful service to your insureds in a cost effective and comprehensive manner. Initially you think you have chosen a good one. However, as time goes on you realize you are not exactly getting what you expected from your TPA. So what happened?
It matters little what your reasons for outsourcing were. Bottom line is if you didn’t take certain steps to properly select and manage a TPA you are likely to end up with problems. The partnership you form with your TPA will be fruitful if you take key steps to select and manage them in a way designed to foster long term success.
Learn how in our latest post!
Everything we know in life started back in kindergarten. Kindergarten is where we learned to socialize in groups, lived by rules, played well with others, managed time, took turns asking questions and listened to authority. Success and creativity were rewarded and failures became further learning experiences. The more I thought about this recently the more I realized that kindergarten is a perfect example of a well-functioning organization and management.
We can lean a lot by going back to kindergarten. Bear with me take a look how this would apply in a claims department.
I have audited a lot of claim files over the years and one consistently good claims professionals manage their claim files following best practices. And when looking at these files there are certain patterns that develop. Good claims professionals don’t fail to document, assume things they don’t know and always stick to the basics. Our latest post gives three examples of things NOT to do to become a good claims professional.
Who knew Albert Einstein was a claims professional? OK maybe he did more important things in this world but some of his most memorable quotes could certainly apply to a claims organization. “Nothing happens until someone does something” as he has been quoted so make it happen and readt our latest post.
Preparing for the unexpected is always the core of any disaster recovery plan. Regardless, the Sandy “Super Storm” created a series of events that few truly every contemplated. It was a scenario that strained many businesses and exposed a number of weaknesses in disaster recovery planning. Unlike prior events, Sandy left a wide are in surrounding a major metropolitan city without power, fuel and public transportation for long periods of time. It’s time to rethink plans that don’t take into account a Sandy Contingency. Tell us what type of planning you have done too and share those ideas with others looking to learn from this tragedy.
Leadership is a topic that we tend to think about as it relates to an individual leading a group. In claims we are always faced with leaders that manage us and help, hopefully, to get the best out of us. But leadership does not mean that you have to have a group of people that follow. There are 5 core traits a good leaders show. In our latest post we connect those five traits to 5 traits a good claims file, when handled well, will show.
Claims Predictive Modeling (CPM) is one of the big buzz words in the industry. After a few decades of improving claims technology systems and creating vast databases of claims information, CPM is an attempt to use that information more effectively. In our latest post we discuss CPM and what it means to make changes to adopt this new metric.