Claims – What we do well and what can we improve? Part 2
For the second half of our June Protection forum, we continued to hear from speakers about what we do well and how we can improve claims.
Panellists for this session included:
Emma Astley, Founder & Adviser – Cover My Bubble
Jen Carhart, Head of Underwriting – HSBC Life
“Claims forms, so please consider being online having these portals and not paper-based. Obviously we still need to have paper-based for some clients preferences, but this does help speed up the process so it needs to be quick and simple.”
“Some insurers, Royal London being one of them, have claims assessors. It makes things so much more easier, smoother journey and it actually quickens up the process.”
“GP reports are mostly being sent out by post and not recorded. Why is it not recorded delivery? Why can’t these not be sent by e-mail?”
“Access to medical information. This has been the biggest improvement for me within this industry, both underwriting and claims having access to medical information has massively improved… This again has helped speed up claims where insurers have wanted to check the medical information at time of application. So by allowing advisers and clients to send as much information as possible, this has really, really helped the claims get paid out quicker.”
Click the audio playback below to listen to the full session.
Full session audio
“We’ve got a very detailed claims philosophy that every claimant is a vulnerable customer is really, really key. So we don’t want them to repeat the story to us multiple times because nobody wants to relay a tragic event of having cancer or being unable to work or a bereavement multiple times.”
“They get allocated a claims assessor from day one and that is your point of contact.”
“Times scales are really, really important. Like I said before, the clock starts when that claims assessor picks up the phone and that person tells you there’s been a bereavement. They’re unable to work. There’s been an accident or there’s been a critical illness, for instance.”
“What we say within our claims philosophy is we don’t offer sympathy. We offer true empathy.”
“Paid rates are really important in the industry, but I think we can all say that we probably see the same figures being repeated year on year. You know, “we pay 98 to 99% of death claims” for instance is a number that gets bounded about by multiple insurers.”
“In the claims stage, a lot of claim claims departments are very manual. Still we need to digitalize at the back end.”
“Digitalisation is going to be a really key thing, I think within the next 12 months for most claims departments.”
