UK IT Industry Awards
In June 2008, ICE Claims was selected by Guardian Holdings Limited (GHL) to replace their existing claims solution and deal with their largely paper-based claims department. A detailed business case was prepared and board approval was gained in July and contracts were signed in August. In order to start realising the benefits in 2009 a challenging implementation plan was drawn up with the first claims to be processed on ICE Claims scheduled for December 2008.
Through a combination of hard work and co-operation the target date was met and GHL started to achieve their efficiency savings from January 2009 and the indemnity spend savings started to increase throughout 2009.
GHL were so pleased with ICE Claims that they agreed with IT-Freedom to enter the prestigious IT Industry Awards for 2009, run by the British Computer Society and covering all sectors in the British economy.
The category chosen was Innovative Project of The Year. They were selected as finalists based on their response including their Return on Investment. GHL created an extensive set of measurable success criteria covering business process improvements, greater efficiency and cost savings all of which had to bring benefits from January 2009. The key criteria were:
- Workload on the administration team to be reduced by 30%
- The Customer Services Advisor (CSA) team to be 20% more efficient. ICE Claims to improve this further by eliminating any re-keying into the existing policy system
- Claims handled by the Accidental Damage and Third Party teams to be processed with 15% less effort than currently
- The average cycle time from logging to closing a claim to reduce by at least 10%. This to have a corresponding reduction in indemnity spend associated with the duration of a claim (storage, transport, car hire etc)
- VAT and excess recovery to be more efficient. Under the existing system approximately 5% of claims had errors in this area and this was to reduce to <1%
- The average indemnity cost on a like for like basis of claims processed would be at least £50 cheaper per claim
Their business case calculated that the cost of ownership of ICE Claims over a four year period was no more than 14% of the identified savings in indemnity spend alone, not accounting for the anticipated savings in administration and subsequent reduction in staff numbers.
For innovation, GHL highlighted the following: ICE Claims is an innovative web-based claims management solution that puts the control of business processes in the hands of the business user and does not require technical programming to change business process. It brings a new dimension to customer service using modern technologies to pro-actively keep the claimant informed. Triggers can be defined by the business to launch informative e-mails and SMS messages as well as providing a customer web portal for tracking progress, uploading documents and providing contacts. Any savings by handling better or settling quicker have a direct positive impact on the profitability of the Insurer.
ICE Claims has a modern Service Orientated Architecture working through a set of services all exposed as web services. This allows ICE Claims to be quickly integrated with other web service solutions. ICE Claims has a standard set of XML interfaces both in and out and other formats are managed through a series of bespoke plug-ins.
ICE Claims is a platform independent Java solution that can be deployed quickly or hosted as a SAAS model. Being web-based, it also allows for a distributed workforce and through its interfaces and portals, allows the Insurer to push a lot of the administration of the claims to its business partners and service providers, again freeing valuable resource to focus on claim handling.
