Outsourcing has been a part of the insurance industry for about a decade. When people in claims hear the word it conjures up images of overseas call centers and image scanning. Several companies have experimented with the outsourcing of simple claims handling as well, but the most common use seems to be assigning tasks to a call center with lower-cost employees. However, there are some key claims tasks that are being outsourced to new channels. These are aimed at reducing costs and increasing customer satisfaction, which have always been primary goals of outsourcing. Below are two examples of this new application.

More Participation from Insureds

How about outsourcing to the insureds themselves? I'm seeing the first evidence of this in the various companies that have phone applications that allow customers to report claims, diagram accident scenes and other important first notice of loss (FNOL) tasks. The next logical step would be to have the customer take photos of the damaged vehicle. In cases where the damage is minor, those photos could be sent to an appraiser to write an estimate from the photos and pay based on that estimate.