Claims Awards 2012: The winners

COMMERCIAL LINES AWARD WINNER: Axa Commercial Claims Team

Left to right: Axa's Mark Revans, Graham Plumb, Martin Ashfield and Chris Voller

Runners up:
Ecclesiastical commercial property claims team
Hiscox commercial lines claims team
Sterling commercial lines claims team

Axa Commercial was awarded this prestigious accolade after taking the ‘one and done' mantra to heart in many areas, and increasing the accuracy of claims handling in order to mitigate and minimise any leakage.

To achieve this Axa Commercial redefined its quality assurance programme to one that supports the development of its claims people and builds competence and confidence.

For example, to combat the consistent increase in fraud, Axa Commercial decided to make significant investment in supporting the obtainment of professional fraud qualifications for its staff - in particular the UCCE (Insurance Fraud Technician) and UCPD (Corporate Fraud Investigator) modules.

And to ensure that staff felt empowered to make early pragmatic decisions, it introduced the You are the Expert programme which provided technical and soft skills training.

Employees were also given assistance through the new QA process, which provides individual coaching and encourages empowerment, rather than a simple measure.

As for the results, Axa Commercial was judged by Brokerbility members as providing the number one claims service across the UK, with its 2011 score up 16% on 2010 when it also topped the rankings.

When its wider broker base was surveyed in February 2012, 74% were positive about its claims service, with 64% saying they had seen an improvement.

PERSONAL LINES AWARD WINNER: Axa Personal Lines, Direct Motor

Axa's Anthony Green collects his award from Post editor-in-chief Jonathan Swift

Runners up:
Direct Line Group, night response team
LV
Sterling personal lines claims team

Axa Personal Lines was deemed a worthy winner of this award by the judges for tackling the issue of rising claims costs from inflated credit hire and credit repairs head-on.

By curbing excessive storage and recovery charges, unexplained additional administration charges added to inflated repair bills and solicitors' fees, this team has developed an opponent-specific strategy that identifies the worst offenders from the outset and seeks to intervene rapidly in cases where the risk is highest.

Managing more than 26 000 motor claims annually on behalf of Swiftcover and Axa Direct, the direct motor claims claimant team comprises three specialist areas - claimant intervention; vehicle and property damage; and credit hire - and is staffed by a team with wide and varied skills.

The solution works by ensuring that claims where the Axa policyholders are clearly initially at fault are swiftly identified. So, at first notification of loss, specific accident circumstances can be linked to a code that immediately directs the claim to the team.

This means that, within minutes of the claim being notified, the team can confirm the circumstances and, rather than delay or oppose liability, immediately take a proactive approach to intervene and assist the third party.

As a result, Axa Personal Lines has not only realised significant savings but claims to have forced other companies to change their behaviour. Indeed, the group notes that one insurer alone had to relinquish almost £100 000 in excessive charges as a result of the strategy.

CII CLAIMS FACULTY ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNER: Mike Klaiber, Zurich

Mike Klaiber collects his award from CII director of faculties Ant Gould

Mike Klaiber, Zurich UK claims disease manager, was awarded the inaugural Chartered Insurance Institute Claims Faculty Achievement Award.

Reflecting on the winner, Ant Gould, CII director of faculties, described Klaiber as "a well respected and active chartered insurer who has dedicated his professional career to ensuring parity and equity in the way the insurance market addresses the legacy of the UK's industrial past".

He added: "An expert in industrial disease claims and asbestos in particular, he has worked tirelessly with successive governments and ministers to improve the compensation process, is an active member of high-level specialist committees, and has been the architect of his insurer's attempts to ensure a fair outcome for claimants in the courts."

Tony Emms, chairman of the CII Claims Faculty and UK chief claims officer at Zurich, said: "The Claims Faculty was delighted to present the special achievement award to Mike Klaiber for his outstanding work in the area of disease claims.

"He was very influential in the recent employers' liability policy trigger litigation outcome in the Supreme Court, which was a decision for common sense and justice for claimants.

"He has dedicated his career to leading the way in this area and he continues to play a lead part in the considerations around untraced mesothelioma claims."

David Williams, claims and underwriting director at Axa Commercial, said: "I was very pleased to see Mike pick up the award as he has provided sterling support to various market initiatives over the years.

"I can't remember an asbestos-related senior level discussion at the Associate of British Insurers that he has not been involved in, and his input has always been incredibly valuable.

"He knows more about the subject than most, can be relied upon to see the big picture as well, and it is to our industry's benefit as well as that of Zurich that we have Mike involved.

"There are few people working in insurance whose impact transcends company borders, and Mike is clearly one of those few. A deserved award winner."

TRAINING AWARD WINNER: QBE Claims Supply Chain Team

QBE's Sarah Kenworthy collects her award from Jonathan Swift

Runners up:
Aviva, tech time
LV
RSA, household technical development programme
Zurich Insurance

The requirement to develop a ‘best in class' claims supply chain delivering real value was the key driver behind QBE Europe's inventive approach to training its dedicated claims supply chain team.

The team comprises claims practitioners and professionals, a five-strong force that sources and manages the performance of external claims provider and third-party administrator services across all classes of business in the 20 countries where QBE operates.

In 2009, QBE's new head of claims supply chain, Sarah Kenworthy, identified that, while direct claims experience was imperative, so too were professional supply chain skills.

Consequently, the team began a comprehensive training programme to ensure its supply chain management skills were as developed as its claims experience.

The entire team began Chartered Institute of Purchase and Supply's graduate diploma in 2010, and became Prince 2 qualified, as well as receiving coaching in other soft skills.

The results speak for themselves: a UK cross-class review of QBE's claims legal panel resulted in multi-million pound savings and a review of its UK casualty loss adjusting panel delivered significant savings.

QBE's claims supply chain team's transformational training programme encompassing professional claims and procurement qualifications alongside behavioural skills development has also supported the delivery of significant financial benefits and leading-edge customer service.

These include impressive savings on legal spend and adjuster fees; Lloyd's Principle 6 compliance; CIPS, Prince II, LLMIT, ACII, FCII qualifications; NLP, MBIT, Insights Profiling skills; 24 exams passed in 2010; 31 in 2011.

The approach has been instrumental in pioneering transformational change. The team has grown from insurance specialists to supply chain experts and is widely recognised for delivering to the highest standards.

RISING STAR AWARD WINNER: Emma Church, LV

Emma Church with national senior partner of sponsor BLM Michael Brown

Runners up:
Jason Anderson, Axa Personal Lines
Chris Douglas, QBE
Emma Leafe, Aviva
Jenny Neale, Ecclesiastical

In the short time Emma Church has worked as business support manager at LV she has transformed the way in which claims are managed and is an asset to the team.

Her first role in the claims validation team saw her identify and implement solutions that improved business processes, reduced complaints and cut claims costs.

With no established workflow management system, she reviewed working practices across three sites to identify the various work elements of handling suspicious claims and how long each took.

She reviewed the teams' case loads and found that some were under-resourced to fight fraud effectively, so secured agreement from management to recruit new claims validation consultants for all teams and for a whole new team to be created.

Her insight has transformed the way potentially fraudulent claims are handled at LV. She also recruited ‘complaints champions' in each team to give advice and guidance on how to manage complaints.

Implemented in March 2011, there has been a 42% reduction in the number of complaints received and an 80% reduction in the number referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

INNOVATION AWARD WINNER: Zurich Insurance

Zurich's Tony Emms collects his award from sponsor Lyon Davidson MD Mark Savill

Runners up:
Aviva personal motor insurance
RSA Eclaim
Sterling Insurance Company
XL Global claim

Zurich was hailed by the judges for rooting out and exposing fraudulent claimants that cost businesses millions of pounds every year in the area of occupational disease.

The insurer decided to tackle the issue because of the lack of a consistent, standardised process for assessing the validity of claims and paucity of pooled industry data which meant that the vast majority of claims were being assessed at face value, with good faith being applied on the part of the insurer.

Zurich concluded that this provided extensive scope for abuse, especially due to the complex nature of a large number of these types of claims, with multiple insurers and cumulative claims commonly involved.

The result was the Occupational Disease Counter-Fraud Initiative, which included a flagging system that alerts staff to potentially fraudulent claims as well as a dedicated fraud co-ordinator.

Zurich believes the launch helped its business customers to more robustly defend themselves against fraudulent claims and is evidenced by improved fraud detection procedures and success rates, with a triple figure percentage increase in total new fraud referrals from the internal disease claims team from2010 to 2011.

There was a similar increase in the total annual number of fraud referrals which have been closed with actual savings recorded from 2010 to 2011.

CUSTOMER CARE AWARD WINNER: Broker Direct

Broker Direct's Jacqueline Harvey and Ann Tomlinson collect their award from Jonathan Swift

Runners up:
Cardif Pinnacle Insurance
Hastings Direct Home & Legacy Insurance Services
RSA pet claims

The winner of this award has gone the extra mile in customer care and not only put the customer at the heart of the process but allowed the customer to own their experience.

Broker Direct built an individually tailored outsourced claims handling service for fleet, motor trade and scheme business where the underwriter, the policyholder, the broker and the scheme manager all create the service proposition.

Broker Direct put an emphasis on educating fleets about the importance of early notification through joint visits with the underwriter as well as training, assistance and advice sheets.

It also provided a network of more than 120 repairers where this arrangement suits the fleet or policyholder, or puts commercial arrangements in place with local suppliers if the policy holder prefers.

Customers and underwriters alike praised the scheme, and the judges felt this tailored service deserves extra recognition.