IRI Partners Blog

By Jim Porcari

In this post, we will highlight some of what we think are the emerging trends in the auto claims space of the P&C market. These include:

• Mobile – moving from mobile “also”, to mobile first
• BPO – by task vs. functional area, across vs. within
• Strategic partnerships – fewer, but broader
• Collision repair MSO partnerships
• Telematics – underwriting today, claims tomorrow
• Significant demographic shifts – Gen Y, Latino, Urban

And these are just a few of the emerging trends that will impact how you leverage people, capital and technology in the claims arena. Some of these are independent variables, some, like mobile, will have to be integrated across tasks and functional areas.

by Jim Porcari

Every insurance company has oceans of data. Many are drowning in their own data. What they don't have much of is actionable information.

Every company has near term, descriptive data. This is point in time information that provides a metric for a variable at a fixed point in time – new claims, new applications, closed claims, endorsement error rate, etc. Most companies now have insightful data. This is data that provides data over time – new PIF per day over a rolling 12-month period, new claims/day over variable time periods. Trend over time is an important directional indicator.

What few companies have is predictive data. This is getting into the arena of actionable information – information that provides the decision maker (can be at any/many levels of the organization) data/information that allows them to make proactive decisions affecting the going forward business, not just data that they react to after the fact.

Progressive thinking organizations have an overt strategy for using all three kinds of data and leveraging both internal and external data and analytics to provide actionable predictive data that leads to competitive advantage.

Flashback: 1984 Cleveland, Ohio in a tiny claims office. I’ve had about 4 months of claims experience so I was already the most experienced claim rep in the 3 adjuster office. It was going to be another day of field work and the schedule included writing 3 estimates, completing 2 scene diagrams, a couple of signed statements (yes, we were not allowed to use our recorder until we had 6 months under our belt) and an in person attorney negotiation. While the boss was devouring the Wall Street Journal, I stocked the “adjust box” with crash manuals, film and forms and convinced my teammate to go out on the road with me. Before you knew it we were back in the office with a handful of settled claims and always some interesting claims stories.

Today: 31 years later. That boss, Jim Porcari, that team mate, Carrie Koran and I are back together! Jim is still devouring the Wall Street Journal and keeping everything on track. Carrie continues to provide great insight, perspective and fun to everything we do.

While there are approximately 275 P&C insurance carriers the industry is small and relationships matter. We will never claim to have all the answers but it’s a safe bet that we can provide an expert that can help!