Innovations in Demand Management Solutions for Insurance

If you are in the claims or claims management business, chances are that you have a more than casual acquaintance with time limit demands (TLDs). Insurance providers receive thousands of documents every day, including demand letters from claimants’ attorneys, and time is not the insurer’s friend when it comes to TLDs. Settlement communications, while a powerful litigation tool for attorneys of an insured, are notoriously hard to handle for the insurer and can lead to recovery in excess of the policy limit in certain cases.

Any action leading to strengthening of the claims validation and vetting process stands an insurer in good stead. In this article, we examine the challenges, the requirements of a typical claims department and demand management solutions for insurance companies in the context of TLDs.

Challenges
Not only is the sheer volume of attorney demand letters a challenge for insurance providers, the complexity of the letters poses an additional dimension of difficulty. The demands can be buried in thickets of complex legal verbiage, leading to ambiguity on key information. In addition, the manual review and tracking of milestones for numerous demands is prone to greater errors.
A TLD that is not identified and managed in time puts an insurer at risk for bad faith exposure and potential litigation, possibly with higher settlement costs. Investing in a demand management solution that can significantly reduce the margin of error in identifying, tracking and managing offers a crucial extra level of protection for insurers.

Serving the Needs of the Claims Team
Adjustors handle multiple claims every day, each associated with multiple documents in turn. Responsible for identifying demand letters and evaluation of the related documents, their most critical responsibility is to understand the specifics and respond to the letters in the stipulated time. Most adjustors manually identify, assess and track demand letters — a process that is both error-ridden and time consuming.

A demand management solution that has the capability to identify demand letters from other correspondence, cull the key information from them and track them through their lifecycle is the need of the hour for adjustors. The volume of TLDs also creates the need for a concise dashboard that can reflect the stage of each demand, has tracking and notification capabilities and has built-in assistance features can be a powerful aid for adjustors. Coupled with modern tools for rapidly processing thousands of documents, it would enable adjustors to gain early awareness of demand letters and increase efficiencies in identifying high-risk demands. It’d also help reduce human error and eliminate losses due to misinterpretation of attorney demand letter response dates.
Claims managers who lead a team of adjustors perform the critical function of ensuring that the TLDs received by the team are processed accurately and on time. A demand management solution that can help claims managers track the status of TLDs under process, raise flags for unanswered demand letters, notify imminent milestones and help configure the team as per need can support managers in increasing the effectivity of the team.

The effectiveness of the claims division lies with senior management who bear the onus for reducing losses due to missed demands. While they need an overall view of the claims, their specific responsibilities require support for their intervention at critical stages, handling exceptions and the ability to reassign personnel to create the most effective teams. They also require their demand management solution to enable them to help track the total demands and exposure values as well as track negotiation offers.

Cogitate Demand Management Solutions for Insurance Carriers
Cogitate Demand Management, a part of the Cogitate Intelligent Claims suite for insurance companies, is a powerful tool for attorney demand letter identification and management. One of its kind, it offers protection against bad faith exposures, loss in claims and mitigates the risk of a missed demand letter that may lead to significant settlement costs. Cogitate Demand Management is capable of parsing complex legal verbiage, identifying demand letters and tracking key dates and offers made in negotiations. A special feature is the use of OCR, text mining and ML to automate identification and management of demand letters. The solution offers complete life cycle management with configurable tracking and notifications, flexible team management features and easy integration with many existing Document Repository Systems and Claims Management Systems. Talk to us today to learn more about how demand management solutions our for insurance carriers and MGAs can help them achieve greater control over attorney demand claims exposure and surpass the needs of your claims division.