It’s not often that platforms for the insurance sector steal the limelight. These days, AI gets all the glory. But it’s the insurance industry that deserves accolades for stepping in when there’s property damage, especially during catastrophes. The severe flooding in California and Hurricane Ian’s damage in Florida are just two recent examples.
Property owners purchase insurance to protect themselves financially. Flooding, fires, tornadoes. Mother nature makes restoration claims a recession-proof business, and insurtech platforms like RocketPlan a promising venture. Natural disasters are essentially inevitable. And climate change is exacerbating the situation. This article discusses why restoration claims professionals need advanced tech to do their job more efficiently.
Assessing property restoration claims is a chaotic process:
Insurance companies need to assess claims accurately in property restoration projects. For that, they need proper documentation, and technology to capture it accurately, quickly, and efficiently. And that’s where the industry is lacking.
Most insurance industry legacy tools used by property restoration claims professionals lack the features necessary to actually capture data properly while on site. They are either difficult to integrate with other company systems such as their accounting software, or it takes weeks to onboard users.
How technology helps track projects:
One major challenge is keeping track of multiple claims projects. In the case of disaster-related claims, such as those resulting from heavy rains and flooding, the number of affected properties can be staggering. This means multiple restoration companies working on numerous projects simultaneously. Each project requires accurate logging of data such as photos, damage assessments, and estimates, which must be linked to the right property. This process is time-consuming and tedious. Errors made during data sharing and submissions to the insurer further delay the project.
Different platforms could lead to more mistakes:
Using different platforms in the insurance industry for data capture increases the risk of mistakes. Even a single photo uploaded to the wrong property claim can cause confusion. That requires revisiting the property to correct the information. Such mistakes directly impact the success of the restoration process and every stakeholder – including the policyholder – inevitably suffers the consequences.
Accurately linking data to the correct claim ensures that the right resources are allocated, helps adjusters evaluate the scope of restoration work, determines coverage, reduces the restoration timeline, and minimizes overall claim costs. It is evident that insurance companies require accurate data for efficient claims processing. Therefore, when restoration teams use different platforms for various data types and input the data manually back at the office, the room for errors expands.
Why insurtech needs to be mobile-first:
There’s difficulty associated with the use of mobile platforms. Most restoration firms provide field teams with mobile platforms to capture data required for property restoration claims. However, the main complaint is that the onboarding process is time-consuming. To streamline the property restoration process, it is crucial to find a user-friendly and intuitive tool that reduces onboarding time.
Such a tool would enable field teams to access and submit necessary documentation in real time using their smartphones. Teams need to be able to do their entire jobs from their mobile devices. This would increase productivity by reducing onboarding time, and actually increasing usage of the tool. The ultimate goal being a speedier claims process in the insurance industry. It would also enhance the overall customer experience, which improves the company’s brand and sets it apart from competitors.
When real-time data sharing makes a difference:
Another challenge in the property restoration claims industry is the efficient transfer of data from the field to the office. Capturing data in the chaotic field environment is challenging enough, but restoration teams face an additional hurdle when they are required to manually input the data back at the office.
This duplication of work increases the chances of errors, wastes time, and leads to delayed claims. Implementing a mobile platform that automatically updates data captured in the field in real time is crucial for streamlining the property restoration insurance claims process. By eliminating the need for manual data entry, this solution would increase productivity, lower the risk of errors, and ensure accurate and timely claims processing.
The role of insurtech companies like RocketPlan:
Platforms like RocketPlan bring technology to the property restoration claims industry. It’s mobile-first, offers an easy onboarding process, and time-stamps, GPS-tracks all data that’s updated in real time. It creates transparency during the entire claims process, which also keeps all stakeholders honest, and mitigates risks of insurance fraud from all angles.
It is essential to invest in tools that streamline the property restoration process for future success in the insurance industry. Property restoration projects require extensive collaboration between the insurance company processing the claim and the contractors performing the work. Adjusters need precise coverage information for documented damage and assurance that the work proceeds as necessary once claims are approved. With the proper insurtech tools, insurers can reduce hours paid for redundant administrative ‘paperwork’, and perhaps translate labor cost savings down to the consumer.
