Automobile Claims Process Gets Digital Makeover With Cues From Amazon and Domino’s

The auto claims process is changing as manual steps and paper-based interactions are shifting to mobile and digital channels.

CCC Intelligent Solutions Vice President Kelli Svymbersky and The Hanover Insurance Group Assistant Vice President of Claims Transformation Lori Pon said there are plenty of avenues from which insurers and providers can draw cues, noting that the simplicity and ease of ordering from eCommerce firms — say Amazon — or ordering from Domino’s can serve as a template.

“As the insurance industry moves more and more to those types of experiences, embedding payments is the next logical step,” said Svymbersky.

Using the Minicomputer at Your Fingertips

As Pon said of carriers, “you have to meet your customers and your partners where they want to be met. So even within the sphere of talking about paying repair shops, paying a contractor, you need to make that seamless.”

For the end users especially, there’s the desire to be paid as quickly as possible, or to navigate the reserving of a loaner (in the event of an accident where the owned vehicle is in the shop) using “that minicomputer that all of us have probably within an arm’s reach,” said Pon.

For the insurers who don’t get it right, the negative impact can be significant.

“Friction impacts your ability to retain” business, Pon said.

Hanover, by way of example, sells its coverage through independent agents, and because the agent community can place business with a multiplicity of carriers, having digital payments in the mix can be a competitive advantage.

“If you don’t have a great experience, you’re probably going to turn the corner away from that business,” said Pon, who added that “we want to create those bonds and those memorable experiences and those zero-effort experiences so that they bond our customers to us for life.”

The claims workflow involves interaction across a variety of parties and stakeholders well beyond the policyholder. Svymbersky said the ideal flow is where “everyone is in the know,” whether it’s an agent, vendor or repair shop. Against that backdrop, agreed Pon and Svymbersky, carriers have the chance to provide an integrated experience that connects all of those parties, removing the need to make a phone call or send an email (or a paper check or fax).

Via a cloud-based approach, CCC has relationships with the carriers and shops, and it has synthesized the workflows so that when a carrier makes a payment, the shop is immediately notified, and the data flow is “put right into the software that the shop is using to manage their business,” Svymbersky said.

This transparency removes the pain points that stem from missing data, she added. There’s no additional administrative burden that weighs on repair shops to reconcile and match payments to the right work order, and this in turn helps ramp up operating efficiencies.

Speed Is Critical

Pon contended that a repair shop’s desire to be part of a carrier’s network is likely contingent on prompt payment.

“Having the digitalization of payments tied into the system of record that the repair shop is using mitigates all the friction that’s out there today,” she said, where payments can be sent across a variety of preferred methods, including automated clearing house (ACH) or virtual cards.

“We’re not chasing sign-offs or asking the customer for additional effort to go to the shop and sign off on things,” she added. “So, I think that allows us to reduce the friction on both the customer side and the shop side. And net/net it’s a better experience.”

Generative AI, she said, has the potential to transform the industry into one where “no-touch claims are commonplace. Being able to deliver that ‘wow’ moment and make someone whole is really important to us.”

Added Svymbersky: “We’re just in the early stages of digitalization … there’s a long runway of opportunity … where there could be mere minutes from the time of first notice of a loss all the way through the closing out of a claim.”