Flow of information is key to concerns over claims services – Portugal

Pedro Nazaré, Head of Risk Management at Refer, the rail group, said the servicing of small claims is not a problem in Portugal but that the situation changes when big sums of money are involved. “I feel that there has been less sensitivity on the part of insurers when it comes to properly understanding and classifying what has really happened in certain loss events,” Mr Nazaré said during the Risk Frontiers roundtable in Lisbon. “I also believe that there is a systematic effort to try and find legal ways to avoid responsibility for the payment of large losses. I do not feel, from the part of insurers, much commitment to sitting down with their clients in order to identify the real nature of a claim. Insurers need to act more like real partners of companies. Of course there are some exceptions, but that is the general impression I have,” he said.hideJosé Luis Amorim, Director of Risk Management at Sonae group, said he recently had a positive experience when settling a large loss. This was despite the fact that it involved a great number of claims experts, including 24 loss adjusters. But he stressed that the process could have been improved. “The negative side of claims services, of course, is that the whole process takes a long time, which is not such a big problem for a group with several stores, like ours, but can be fatal for a small company,” he said. “So one aspect that could be improved would be to make the money paid as compensation more promptly available.” The sharing of experiences amongst risk transfer partners could go some way towards reducing the time spent servicing a claim, he pointed out. “Loss adjusters, insurers and brokers have a lot of experience in dealing with claims and they could share the information they have in order to reduce the learning curve about a loss,” Mr Amorim said. “If it was possible to know early about the problems that will inevitably arise during the servicing of a claim it would greatly help the process. Also, sharing knowledge of major incidents, their causes and how to avoid them, would help a great deal in improving risk management processes.” Demetrio Tahoces, Director of Insurable Risks at EDP, the energy group, agreed that closer links between interested parties is the best way to achieve satisfactory claims settlements. “We have learned that the servicing of claims is much improved when insurers, brokers, loss adjusters and risk managers work very closely together from the beginning,” he said. “The biggest difficulty is probably to guarantee that information flows freely during the whole process. In fact it is an internal struggle for many companies that have a claim to gather all the documents required. If companies have an efficient internal flow of information, it helps insurers and brokers very much.” He added: “We have made important efforts to make sure that the information we deliver to the market in the case of a claim is the best possible. Thus insurers can properly evaluate the losses and make the process work better.” Crispin Stilwell, New Business Director and member of the board at Willis Portugal, believes that the availability of information is key to making sure claims are processed efficiently. “It is more difficult to service a claim if we receive only partial information from our clients, especially in the case of large losses, which are dynamic situations that require intensive management,” he said, adding that companies need to do their homework well before a loss takes place. “We were recently called in to help with a large claim where on the one hand the client had no broker and on the other it had no preparation for such a large event – no contingency plans in place,” he said. “This resulted in a huge distance between the client’s capacity of response and the insurance company’s well-oiled procedures. The client’s in-house capacity could not match the pace of the servicing by the insurance company and they certainly could not influence the insurer.” Mr Stilwell added: “Well prepared in-house expertise to deal with a loss can help to avoid many problems when a claim is processed. Many times the payment of claims is delayed by the client’s lack of know-how. So preparation for a crisis is a worthwhile investment because in a claim quick access to information is key.”

Flow of information is key to concerns over claims services – Portugal

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