Crawford & Company UK became an accredited Lloyd’s third-party administrator (TPA) in July and gaining accreditation in the UK is an important step for us. Our aim is to secure Lloyd’s accreditation across all of our territories,” says William Jones, senior client manager, Lloyd’s & London Markets at Crawford.
Crawford already has a strong relationship with the Corporation of Lloyd’s, having helped workshop and pilot various initiatives in the Future of Lloyd’s Claims Workstream, including Delegated Data Manager, DA Status Tracker, standardizing cash calls and the Vitesse faster claims payment solution which Crawford will be integrating with our claims system.
“The Future at Lloyd’s is all about modernizing the market and improving speed and efficiency through the adoption of digital systems and processes,” Jones explains. “At Crawford, we have spent the last couple of years really focusing on how we prepare for the future and improve the way business is done today.”
Crawford has, for example, developed extensible APIs enabling claims data to flow seamlessly from both Crawford and client portals. We are also piloting an API solution which pushes claims data to our clients daily, potentially removing the need for monthly bordereaux. “Sending a spreadsheet every month is becoming outdated – we want to be sending our clients data multiple times per day,” Jones says.
Crawford has also developed interactive management information dashboards to give clients state-of-the-art insight into their portfolios.
“Whether it’s building closer relationships with brokers, assessing claims performance at the individual program level or aggregating claims data from multiple TPAs, the ability to visualize data is key for coverholders and capacity providers,” Jones explains. “We piloted with partners to find out what types of data matter most to them and in what format it is needed so we can be flexible to the unique ways clients ingest data,” he adds.
Allocating claims to the correct year of account is another challenge that is present in the market. To address this, Crawford has developed a solution where claims are automatically allocated to the correct year of account and risk code without the need for the adjuster to do this manually.
According to Jones, the shift to remote working during the pandemic helped the TPA business hone its technology and people offering. It also enabled the team to forge closer relationships with international colleagues, get hands-on experience of working with other teams and gain a deeper understanding of the capabilities in the Crawford network.
“The world became smaller, which enabled us to adapt our roles, reassess what we do, spot potential problems earlier and improve our systems to better serve clients,” he says.
Now we are part way through the US CAT season and associated surge events, the improvements made over the past 12 months will be put to the test. “US CAT season is the real acid test every year for the Lloyd’s Market,” he says.
Innovations in AI, data, analytics and resource management enable Crawford to deploy field resources more efficiently than ever before while getting a more informed view of what teams are seeing and doing on the ground.
“We map policy in force counts before the CAT season,” Jones explains, “meaning we can immediately understand how severe and extensive losses may be and start getting interim payments out to policyholders straight away.”
“Dashboards enable us to visualise how client programs are affected with minimal lag, and information can be fed seamlessly to London meaning people on the ground can focus 24/7 on looking after customers rather than providing ongoing updates over email.”
“It’s difficult to be prepared for all eventualities in a cat season,” he adds, “but the investment Crawford has made in its people and technology puts us in a great position to assist our clients if the worst happens.”
