Claims Awards Asia: Claims Service Provider of the Year

In an extremely competitive category, Willis impressed as the best claims service provider yet again after last year's triumph at the inaugural awards.

Willis Mumbai, a global shared service centre with over 1800 associates, deals with a wide range of large international commercial clients.

As cited by one of the judges, Willis Mumbai impressed the judges with its wide range of product lines. Within its risk portfolio, the group includes a wide array of products such as accident and health, aviation, blood stock, construction, energy fine arts, financial risks, professional indemnity and property & casualty.

Willis also provides a claims operation for Willis Re which includes aerospace, credit, healthcare, marine, life and workers' compensation. Meanwhile, its international operations help out with affinity, corporate, insolvency and transportation risks (among many others).

To add, its captive arm in Mumbai also has a dedicated team helping its UK clients for uninsured loss recovery. Last year, courtesy its various claims service initiatives, Willis managed to reduce the ‘uninsured loss recovery' claims life cycle from 374 days to 300 days resulting in a smoother claims process flow.
In fact, 50% of all its work is handled completely end to end
from Mumbai.

Over the year, the service provider also embarked on a plan to create a centre of excellence. It connected experts from different claims business units to improve the claims' skill base and overall client servicing. The group was called the ‘Mumbai Claims Community' and included participants from across the
business including global specialties, Willis UK, international and reinsurance divisions.

The global specialties team, the largest part of the operation, has been focusing over the last year on ‘operational efficiency' by reviewing existing processes - allowing it to do ‘more with less'. This included reviewing processes step by step and categorising them into ‘value' and ‘non value-added' tasks.

Willis's Kanchan Kubal (right) collects the award from Brian Whitmore, Belfor's Asia managing director

Willis Mumbai also provides feedback to insurers and reinsurers via its Willis Quality Index, a customised report with management information, which allows carriers to benchmark their performance against their peers. A host of well-known companies have been visiting Willis to ascertain insightful feedback
over the last 12 months.

In some of the major losses/claims dealt with in 2014 were two major car manufacturers involved in multiple major fires on a ship laden with thousands of cars and a power station involved in major flooding.

Helping prioritise the maximum expertise and resources to these larger claims was the establishment of the Express Claims Service which helps segregate and fast-track non-complex claims. This has reduced the turnaround
in new losses in this category from three days to two days.

The award's entry led to a judge commenting that Willis Mumbai had operated with a clear philosophy and focus on customer service. In addition it has an "excellent operational efficiency with a clear mapping of performance and claims process." The judge added Willis's "breadth and depth of its claims service performance is outstanding." Furthermore, a different judge noted "some strong claims performance measurement tools and positive responses from clients."

There was further praise: "This is an impressive and well-constructed entry. The entrant has a wide range of services and business/product lines and each section of the entry details purposes and successes."

In addition to providing a great claims' service Willis Mumbai supports important client risk management services such as actuarial services, catastrophe modeling, human resources, insurance accounting, IT development, knowledge services, managing premiums and pre-sale research.

Enthused by yet another victory at the Claims Awards Asia, Simon Smith, Mumbai CEO remarked "The Mumbai claims team of 252 FTEs has put a lot of work and investment into ‘connecting, innovating and investing' in the Mumbai Claims Community. We have come a long way but also still have a long way to go in developing our claims capability offering in Mumbai. This award shows us that working collaboratively together is the way we can win."

In the judges' words "Willis Mumbai has shown that the breadth and depth of its claims service performance is outstanding, furthermore, some strong claims performance measurement tools and positive responses from clients."

Congratulations to Willis Processing Services India for winning the Claims Service Provider of the Year for the second year in a row - well deserved!

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The Claims Awards Asia 2014 was held in Hong Kong at the Renaissance Harbour View hotel on 19 November. Over 100 people from the Asian insurance claims’ community attended. For more information see www.claimsawardsasia.com