In the early 1990s, the claim industry received a startling wake-up call. There were thousands of accidents involving SUVs that flipped. While the industry was aware of the issue, claims and information as to the scope of the problem came in slowly over a period of several years.

Additionally, the information needed to assess the financial impact of the situation was often buried in adjuster notes. As such, finding it required time and a considerable amount of manual labor. That meant insurers had a difficult time identifying the magnitude of the potential cost. Soon, that handful of rollover claims grew to become one of the most significant collections of product failure claims to hit the insurance industry. Insurers recognized that there had to be a better way to get a handle on these types of situations. They realized that new technologies, procedures, and approaches would need to be developed and implemented.

Nearly 15 years later, that new approach is here. The same technology that makes it possible for thousands of young people to share information on social networking sites also helps claim executives spot the patterns in their claim files that, when left undetected, could send loss expenses spiraling.