2020 has changed everything and clients, investigators, expert witnesses, health/property/vehicle and other professional experts together with brokers and insurers have realised the value and necessity of online and virtual experiences rather than relying on face-to-face meetings.

The NHS and GP Practices would collapse without the adoption of online and telephone sessions with patients. Insurers and supply chain partners who would send engineers, investigators and specialists all over the country without a second thought now find they often collect even better evidence using live-streaming video, photo and text data.

The client can be guided and be the onsite investigator for the organisation needing to manage a claim or renewal of policies. Don't fall into the trap of thinking just leveraging Skype or Zoom will provide the answer.

Even with the client's permission you need to ensure the safe and secure processing of data in a platform that is both GDPR compliant and practical. As importantly ensuring the data is part of a single digital record for the claim and/or policy i.e. incorporated as part of an end to end claims management platform, broker platform or investigation platform.

Many insurers rely on partners like Robertson & Company  which combines the professionalism of trained investigators with award winning claims management technology. Better still, by leveraging technology they offer investigation by exception that means insurers only pay for actionable information rather than every bit of data collected whether valuable or not. This delivers significantly better investigation and counter-fraud results and tackles that persistent thorn in a claims director's side: under-reserving and large losses

Video and photo evidence, even with all the value in the metadata is not enough to paint a complete picture.

For cases where the clinical hands on assessments are key to the opinion, they will be unable to be replicated by video means. Examples of these include:

  • An assessment of grip strength, commonly measured by a dynamometer;
  • Range of motion assessments using a goniometer;
  • Assessments of muscle tone and power;
  • Prosthetic check out to determine extent of socket fit;
  • Assessment for specific ankle, foot orthosis, which involves detailed assessment of anatomical alignment and symmetry, and sometimes involves the insertion of a block under a foot to identify potential deviation correction methods;
  • Assessments of sensation using a monofilament;
  • Assessments of balance;
  • Assessments of visual field; and
  • Where a risk assessment indicates the need for the assistance/close guidance of a therapist when undertaking activity. 

from: Claims Media 6th November 2020

A claims management platform like 360Siteview ensures the insurer, broker or investigator creates custom templates to collect this information, including instrument data, telematics and IoT data in  eFNOL processes backed by personal injury specialists adding virtual interviews and asking questions to add context to text data fields, images and metadata.

That is the value of no code platforms that let the insurer, broker and investigation company customise workflows and processes without recourse to coders or vendors. Constant improvement for ever improving performance. 

Clients and all participants in  the insurance value chain benefit from online and virtual replacement of analogue form filling and onsite visits.

2020 changed everything and those that stand still will be left behind.