by Denise Court, CMO plnar.
The market landscape for insurance continues to undergo major shifts and the speed of change is not slowing down. Largely due to rapid digital transformation, what was once thought of as a “Meet the Jetsons” fantasy, is now a reality. Augmented reality (AR) software is no longer relegated to expensive video game headsets—instead, we can use AR applications as a guide to simplify complex instructions and to improve workflows and processes. With advanced computer vision, we can train computers to see what our human eyes would see, capturing more nuance and context than ever before. These kinds of technology applications, and others, continue to change our behavior and expectations around information access and how easy certain tasks should be.
With the speed with which technology changes, many industries struggle to keep up. The insurance industry is historically conservative and slow to make sweeping changes, which has caused a serious lag in technology adoption. As non-traditional tech disrupters enter the insurance field, insurers absolutely need to take a careful, critical look at how they build relationships with their customers and whether or not their current user journeys, experiences and processes cultivate a high level of satisfaction. The claims process is burdened with changing consumer expectations and inefficiencies and insurers know there is significant room to transform the claims experience to boost profits, improve customer satisfaction and stay competitive.
Introducing the Plnar Digital Desk Platform for Interior Property Claims—How Did We Get Here?
A quick history lesson: before desk adjusting, a field adjuster was responsible for capturing data about properties and damage or scope of loss while also completing the estimation. However, in 2009, the number of catastrophes that resulted in insured property losses nearly doubled from 2008, resulting in a 400% increase in the total value of property losses over a one year period. That’s a huge jump! To deal with this drastic increase, providers shifted their approach to allow most of the analysis and estimation to happen at the desk so that documenting the damage could happen faster with less expensive resources. This shift was essential for lowering operating costs and enabling providers to handle a higher volume of claims.
While traditional desk adjustment was a useful response to trend over a decade ago, the digital age has popularized a new, virtual way of doing things. At plnar, we’ve discovered that a digital approach is needed if insurance companies want to stay competitive.
Self-Service and the Digital Desk Enables Virtual Interior Property Claims
Digital desk adjustment does not remove the human element of the claims process—rather, it enhances it. Instead of spending hours on the phone reviewing data points, re-answering standardized questions or tracking down information, desk adjusters and customers can build engaging, proactive relationships where both parties are informed, on the same page and ready to settle claims virtually and with ease.
The digital desk marries the move towards operational efficiency of traditional desk adjustment with the virtual, automated and simple digital experiences that today’s customers love. With a self-service capability and fully digital desk, anyone, not just field adjusters, can capture interior space and damage data and send the full context of the space to the desk adjuster for analysis and estimation. Data is digitized and processes are automated so that the desk adjuster can spend more time on claim analysis, settlement and customer service instead of data collection and validation. I am especially excited about this digital approach because it gives considerable autonomy to customers while providing clear, complete, measurable digital photos that puts the adjuster virtually in the interior space. Not only does this approach drive a more efficient and agile claims process, it also saves money and allows insurers to respond to claims with flexible, scalable processes.
How Plnar’s Digital Desk Platform Enables Virtual Claims for Interior Properties
We’ve developed a digital desk adjustment platform – powered by guided augmented reality, artificial intelligence and computer vision that allows companies to scale their claims management processes based on the simplicity or complexity of claims. For small interior property claims that do not require field adjusting services, our platform allows the policyholder, a gig worker or inspector to report damages and settle claims almost instantly by simply taking a picture of the interior room and and damage and uploading the digital photos into the plnar platform for analysis. This process enables adjusters to spend more time building customer relationships, answering questions and processing claims rather than focusing on time-consuming manual scoping and damage assessment that must be analyzed later. Just like I would rather spend my time bringing value to my clients rather than answering emails, our platform gives insurers more time to spend doing what they want to do—building great customer relationships.
I love what we are doing at plnar.
Check it out for yourself by visiting plnar.ai and watch Plnar in Action to see how we are transforming the interior virtual claims process today.