Crawford boss raises concern over insurance claims inflation

Claims management companies consider claims inflation as one of the primary challenges for insurers, brokers, and corporations, according to Angela Fitzpatrick, head of key account management at Crawford & Company (Crawford).

Fitzpatrick, who oversees the claims management titan’s major client accounts in Australia, said insurance companies and others must leverage every opportunity to help manage claims costs and speed-up claims resolution times while supporting policyholders in addressing repair or rebuild requirements amid such a price-hiked environment.

“I think Crawford is one of the best in the business when it comes to these things because it has a proven track record of being agile, and we recognise the need to evolve according to shifting market expectations,” she said. “We’ve seen this demonstrated by Crawford around the world – it is capitalising on enhanced digitisation and robotic process automation to improve claims efficiency, as well as offering better outcomes for policyholders via our expansive network of tradespeople and suppliers from Crawford Contractor Connection, the managed repair area of the business.”

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Crawford Contractor Connection has one of the largest managed repair networks in Australia, with first-hand experience with the material and labour challenges facing the building market in the country and overseas.

“Because of that broad group of builders and tradespeople that make up our network, we have the potential to provide insurers with a level of competitive advantage in obtaining quotes and repairs in a more timely fashion,” Fitzpatrick said.

“What we call our ‘One Crawford’ proposition is solving real challenges for clients. That is a single-supplier service where we have the ability to handle a claim from ‘first notification of loss’ through to legal and everything in between. It’s this streamlined process that leads to efficiencies, and we all know time is money,” she continued. “Furthermore, from a client perspective, if you only have to handle one supplier rather than several across the life of a claim, that makes your life much simpler. Crawford is the only claims management provider in Australia that has the whole claim lifecycle covered.”

Contractor Connection head Tim Butler aired the same sentiments: “While there is no silver bullet to side-stepping these building industry challenges, Contractor Connection is seeing some clear differentiation between building suppliers. What this intelligence does is enable us to steer workloads to the best performing suppliers for the fastest results possible.”