Technology Enabled offshore Claims Management

In Claims Management, two of the biggest challenges faced by companies are the lack of well-organized and the staff to handle such transactions that require specialization and experience. In most cases, the inability of the companies to set up a proper management system is due to availability of trained and experienced staff, the costs associated for setting up such operation, or simply that there are not enough transactions available to have a big unit just for claims management. One of the most challenging factors in this process is individual judgment on part of claims handler. So replication of this intuitive assessment in an in-house setup is quite difficult.

Generally it takes around six to eight weeks to transfer claims management offshore.  As some of the claims management processes involve a high degree of local knowledge and intuition, the off shoring of the claims management processes may take around 6 to 8 months.

In the past decade, the introduction of new technology platforms has served as a good replacement to individual judgments.  Technology platforms can assist in providing access to company’s claims data and settlement bands. Actually these platforms have in-built series of interactive questions which facilitate decisions and objective evaluations for claims validity and value.

Let’s take the example of a house hold insurance claim management where the claim’s handler needs local know how and experience. The online claims management platform makes an assessment of the nature and extent of the damage by accessing data of damage in the surrounding areas. Based on that information, the insurance carrier will send a local agent and contractor to repair any damages to the home of the policyholder. Thus, online claim processing platform can make claim handling easy and fast across countries and continents.

No doubt, innovations and introduction of technology in the offshore claims management systems ensures standardized processing for customers while maintaining speed, quality and lower costs of the overall processes.

The offshore claims management processes are further facilitated by the proliferation of bandwidth, which enables connectivity both in data and voice and makes the offshore provider as an extension of the company.