As the markets harden across Europe, use your claims data to tell your story.

Some say it may be short lived, others say the market may continue to harden. Either way it’s crucial to take control and, with the help of your claims data, tell your own story.

Nobody knows your business better than you, and nobody can tell the story of where you’ve been and where you’re going better than you can.  There’s an old saying “to assume makes an ass of you and me”. Using your claims data to tell your story can reduce assumptions and help drive the underwriting of your risk.

Good data is also a key driver to risk improvements and other cost savings. Claims data can generate a wealth of information which is often not used to its maximum potential. Data can drive behaviours and reduce risk as well as influence underwriters and ultimately reduce premiums.

This could be benchmarking, which could involve comparing your claims or claims handler’s performance against your peers or comparing the performance of the divisions within your business or companies in your group against each other.

It can be used for forecasting or modelling your future costs and exposures to enable you to make informed decisions as to how you structure your insurance programme, and at what level you transfer risk to the insurance market.

If your business is growing through acquisition, claims data can help you understand the liabilities which you may be inheriting as part of a purchase and can allow you to account for these, either in the Sale and Purchase agreement or on your P&L.

Equally, if you are disposing of businesses, the data can be vital to ensure that you are disposing of liabilities or exposures correctly as part of the sale, and that the story you tell going forward takes into account the shape of the new ‘slimmed down’ business.

How ever you use your claims data it is critical to make sure you have clean and accurate data. The picture that comes out is only as good as the information that goes in, and the input of data is fallible. We are only human, systems may be generic and not capture exactly what you need, insurers or claims handlers make mistakes so regular sense checking of your data is important.

At a business level, or if you use a Third Party Administrator (TPA), you may have the opportunity to define what data is captured and how it is analysed and displayed. This gives you a great opportunity to capture exactly what you need to tell your story and, if at all possible, the opportunity to ‘own’ the data rather that rely on insurers to provide you with what they can or what they think you need.

It is your story to tell and you do it best – with a little help from your claims data!

To see how we can help you tell your story, visit www.hammersbachconsulting.co.uk or contact us at info@hammersbachconsulting.co.uk