Claims inflation is one of the primary challenges that claims management companies should be tackling collaboratively with insurers, brokers and corporations, according to Crawford Australia’s Head of Key Account Management.
Angela Fitzpatrick, who oversees the Crawford’s major client accounts in Australia said that in such a price-hiked environment, it’s critical insurance companies and others are ratcheting every possible lever to help manage claims costs and speed-up claims resolution times, while also supporting policyholders in efforts to address repair or rebuild requirements.
“I think Crawford is one of the best in the business when it comes to these things because it has a proven track record of being agile and we recognise the need to evolve according to shifting market expectations.
“We’ve seen this demonstrated by Crawford around the world – it is capitalising on enhanced digitisation and robotic process automation to improve claims efficiency, as well as offering better outcomes for policyholders via our expansive network of tradespeople and suppliers from Crawford Contractor Connection, the managed repair area of the business,” Ms Fitzpatrick said.
“Contractor Connection has one of the largest managed repair networks in Australia, so it has firsthand experience with the material and labour challenges facing the building market both here and indeed the world. Because of that broad group of builders and tradespeople that make up our network, we have the potential to provide insurers with a level of competitive advantage in obtaining quotes and repairs in a more timely fashion,” she said.
Head of Contractor Connection Tim Butler, echoed this sentiment: “While there is no silver bullet to side-stepping these building industry challenges, Contractor Connection is seeing some clear differentiation between building suppliers. What this intelligence does is enable us to steer workloads to the best performing suppliers, for the fastest results possible.”
Having been with the business for over eight years, Fitzpatrick has lived through much of Crawford’s evolution over the past decade.
“When people think Crawford in Australia, they immediately think loss adjusting, and that’s accurate. But we are loss adjusting and so much more today. We’ve evolved to be more because that is what is providing exceptional customer experiences when it comes to claims handling.
“What we call our ‘One Crawford’ proposition is solving real challenges for clients. That is a single-supplier service where we have the ability to handle a claim from ‘first notification of loss’ through to legals and everything in between. It’s this streamlined process that leads to efficiencies and we all know time is money.
“Furthermore, from a client perspective if you only have to handle one supplier rather than several across the life of a claim, that makes your life much simpler. Crawford is the only claims management provider in Australia that has the whole claim lifecycle covered,”
Fitzpatrick concluded.
