Greater focus on reviewing claim handler files necessary, report suggests

Claims supervisors at U.S. property and casualty insurance companies often have misplaced focus and could be spending more time reviewing their claim handlers’ files, according to a new survey report from Towers Watson.

Chief claims officers typically budget for supervisors to spend two to six hours on reviewing their direct reports’ files, suggest the results of the consulting firm’s annual Property & Casualty (P&C) Claim Officer Survey.

Among supervisors, 23% spend two hours or less reviewing direct reports’ files, and half (51%) spend between two and four hours. The remaining 26% “don’t even begin to approach the requisite amount of time for this core supervisory responsibility,” Towers Watson says (Figure 1.).

“Greater focus on reviewing claim-handler files is necessary — three hours a day is insufficient to efficiently manage claims,” Frank Ramsay, Towers Watson’s North American Claim Management practice lead said in a statement on the survey.

“Competing priorities prevent supervisors from spending enough time reviewing the files of their direct reports. This inhibits the claim operation’s ability to deliver optimal claim outcomes and can have an adverse effect on insurers’ profitability.”

That’s despite 86% of CCOs claiming to allow supervisors “the authority to make critical decisions and provide direction to their teams.”

Effective supervision was seen by 71% of CCOs to be the leading factor for delivering superior claim outcomes, while 60% said ineffective supervision was a key barrier to exceptional claim performance (Figure 2.).

“The link between effective supervision and critical claim functions, including loss cost containment and first-party claimant customer service, is very important,” Ramsay noted. “Claim handlers are the front line to deliver best-in-class claim outcomes, and their work should be the top priority for their supervisors.”

Almost half (49%) of respondents said that high claim inventories are the primary challenge supervisors face in delivering superior claim outcomes, while an “insufficient understanding of claim leading indicators and metrics” ranked as the leading obstacle for claim handlers.

“The top challenges for P&C insurers overall centered on the consistent execution of best practices (54%) and maintaining organizational focus on critical outcomes (51%),” Towers Watson also noted.