Graham Newman, European Product Marketing Manager, FINEOS
The second full day of the conference began with a beautiful day, and there’s something about being near the ocean that puts a spring into everyone’s step.
Karen Furtado of the advisory company Strategy Meets Action opened the second main day of the FINEOS Claims Summit here in sunny California. In her session: Redefining the Claims Experience: Imperatives for Impactful Change, Karen spoke to us about the difficulty of actually realising in practice the promise with which technological change comes. With state-of-the-art claims management systems today we can do much more than just automate existing procedures and processes. There are innovations and far-reaching advances in technology that now make it possible to make huge improvements in how work is actually done in our claims operations, and how better quality information can be reflected in correspondingly better quality decisions.
Change can be hard though; few people welcome change for change sake, unless they are truly fed up with the status quo, and even then it can be daunting – better the devil you know and all that. Karen pointed out that organisations must be as prepared for the process of change as they are for the results of change. If they are not, the results tend not to come, or at the very least not to come in the form in which they were expected.
Karen provided us with some fascinating evidence from her most recent research findings developed from extensive interviews and surveys with more than 480 claims professionals in Disability, Life and Property & Casualty insurance carriers. She concluded with a call to action to use technology to empower people to go beyond the transaction, to do the job differently. A telling point she made was that technology should enable the organisation to transform to meet the future needs, not merely to automate the past.
At events such as these the case study is a excellent way of getting from the theory to the practice, as they are, when at their best, a showcase for real life experiences. The case study from Denise Cosgrove, General Manager, Claims Management of ACC was no exception.
The final session of the morning was mine and came under the title Claims Service as a Differentiator, in which I took a look at differentiation amongst insurers by focusing on the claims operation. I looked at what differentiation in service actually is and where you might find it and talked about what consumers actually want from their insurers. Drawing on research, our broad experience with insurers around the world and my own personal experience as a claimant I discussed differing examples of differentiation in practice and how insurers can develop their own strategies to deliver superior customer service. This topic will be the subject of a future FINEOS blog.
The rest of the day involved Customer Advisory Group meetings.
More to come tomorrow.
