Transforming times Zurich’s Hilary Bates is seeing positive results as an overhaul of the group’s claims operations continues By Wendy Pugh
CONFRONTING FEEDBACK from brokers highlighted a challenging scenario for Hilary Bates when she was appointed Zurich Australia and New Zealand Chief Claims Officer two years ago with a mandate to drive change. The company globally had been going through a difficult period. Decisions were made to exit some lines, while impacts on staff, morale and the business overall were showing up in customer satisfaction ratings. “We were hearing it loud and clear, we were seeing it in the TNPS (transactional net promoter score) results, and our brokers were really letting us know that we needed to do more than a tweak,” Ms Bates tells Insurance News. The company also faced technological challenges, with consumers increasingly embracing digital and online services, and commercial clients looking for similar innovation from their insurers. “We took a deep dive into what our customers were telling us, both the brokers and the end-insureds, in terms of the service they were getting,” Ms Bates says. She and her team started with motor claims. “Around two-thirds of our claims come in motor, and obviously if you can’t get a motor claim right you are going to start losing the trust of your stakeholders and partners, and it needed to be a priority area for us.” Feedback suggested the
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company needed to be more prompt and responsive in its communications, while external frustrations were echoed internally as team members faced barriers that affected service levels. Ms Bates says new measures were introduced to change the way the team operated, while system innovations improved the customer experience and brought processes into the digital age. Experienced people were appointed to work at the front end of a claim, specialist expert teams were introduced and Zurich launched a priority motor repair service in partnership with Gemini, to more speedily handle straightforward cases. Under the priority process, vehicles weighing less than 2.7 tonnes and with damage of up to $20,000 are eligible for a rapid turnaround at a designated repair centre, bypassing the need to chase quotes or wait for an assessor. Zurich also introduced a priority settlement service for relatively simple property claims, providing a swifter response in cases where more complex engineering or construction expertise is not a critical requirement. Claims eligible for fast tracking have an anticipated loss of under $30,000 and the company aims to make payment within 24-48 hours of receiving required information. Attention is now focused on the long-tail area, where liability
