Having access to the right tools is essential for measuring success when expanding into new industries, geographies, or lines of coverage to leverage real-time data and improve business decisions.
We spoke to Daniel Link, Vice President, Consultative Analytics at Gallagher Bassett (GB) to understand how leveraging the right tools and systems can help mutual and mid-market carriers achieve superior outcomes.
Why are the right tools and systems, including a RMIS platform, so important for mutual and mid-market carriers?
Mutual and mid-market carriers are under pressure to balance capital constraints while also meeting the need to grow and transform their businesses. To do this successfully, it’s not only critical to have the support of underwriters, managers, claims professionals, actuaries, and other subject matter experts, but access to real-time data on leading and lagging indicators of book health and performance. Utilizing data can help mutual and mid-market carriers make more informed decisions about where they invest in new growth, while also giving them the ability to nimbly adjust underwriting appetites to match the inevitable growing pains.
At GB, we are always thinking about how to merge our claims management expertise, intellectual capital, and AI computing technologies with our ecosystem of industry-leading RMIS products. We recently developed a suite of carrier-focused underwriting dashboards within LUMINOS, our award-winning RMIS platform, to help:
- Provide visibility into core claims outcomes metrics
- Identify how changes in business mix impact claim outcomes and identify strengths/risks across a portfolio
- Determine the relative strength of a renewal account through claims outcome benchmarking
Specifically, we’ve seen clients leverage our dashboards to prioritize which claims to focus on, based on both traditional claim criteria (i.e., dollars incurred, duration, in-suit), as well as predictive variables (i.e, reserve variance to waypoint, claim complexity and volatility, litigation propensity, etc).
How can access to these tools and systems help carriers better leverage their people?
There is virtually no value gained by having people spend countless hours trying to query data or reports only to find that they have made errors in their query or that the report they pulled didn’t contain the necessary data inputs. The right systems and tools allow organizations to automate data analysis, efficiently extract insights, and positively impact total cost of risk (TCOR). Carriers should also look for claim-data dashboards and reporting functionalities that support pre-configured reports and interactive reporting tools.
LUMINOS is designed to eliminate the busy work that is often performed by analysts and facilitate the centralization, management, and rapid dissemination of data and insights to organizations. For example, we’ve recently redesigned our reporting functionality by organizing reports according to common questions a risk manager might have around claim frequency and severity. By doing so, we’ve taken guesswork out of finding the right report and directed the end user to the exact report they need based on their inquiry. By automating the process of data extraction, we enable our client teams (particularly data and analytics teams) to focus on what matters most: creating value by generating insights.
How does working with a third-party administrator (TPA) like GB help carriers control costs by providing access to these tools?
The explosion in risk data quantities, sources, and availability is rewriting the book of information management. Carriers are often burdened with costly aging legacy systems that require massive annual investments just to maintain what are often suboptimal systems. Additionally, it’s not uncommon for those systems to be disconnected with one another and difficult to access data across an entire book of business. Our methodology behind technology investment is centered on whether the product or improvement can measure superior claims outcomes, litigation spend, reserve accuracy, service delivery, and improve over time. Typically, most carriers we partner with elect to utilize LUMINOS precisely because it allows them to access all claims data—both historical and newly arising claim data—in one easy-to-use, centralized location.
What else is important for mutual and mid-market carriers to understand about tools, systems, and data?
All carriers, and particularly mutual and mid-market carriers, can achieve accelerated growth by partnering with a TPA, whether it’s to offload handling of legacy claims, outsource claims handling to improve outcomes, reduce fixed costs, or free up capital for longer term investments. At GB, we ensure that we can support our claims professionals to perform their role to the best of their ability, with all the predictive analytics and insights required to successfully support modern-day carrier and risk management programs.
Get in Touch
Connect with our team to learn more about how GB can provide specialized solutions for mutual or mid-market carriers.
