In his role of senior executive for claim quality, customer and policyholder service, reserving, expenses and regulatory compliance, Mike Lancashire’s leverages his background in claims and his commitment to technology to compete with much larger insurers.
According to a recent article in Insurance & Technology, Lancashire, who is Senior Vice President of Claims and Integrated Customer Solutions at Florida based Main Street America Group, sees that one of his highest priority objectives is to achieve consistency across all agent- and policyholder-facing claims and service capabilities. “Our agents are quoting the same business on our technology as that of the large national carriers, so we need to be competitive,” Lancashire says. “Agents want ease of use and low cost, and they migrate to carriers with the best technology.”
Key elements in technology include a modern claims administration system (the organization was one of the first to license GuideWire’s ClaimCenter system. A second key element is enterprise-wide implementation of document management, beginning within claims. The organization is utilizing Vertafore’s ImageRight for this task.
Embedding business intelligence and analytic capabilities within the claims department are key goals as well. Lancashire sees two areas of focus to be claims assignment and litigation management. These are currently being used in the SIU, but Lacashire sees opportunities “to expand it to ensure that the right file gets to the right adjuster from the beginning, and that we can use analytics to identify cases with the propensity to go to litigation.”
Technology is key to the vision of integrated customer service. Lancashire is quoted: “Whether by smart phone apps, or web access to billing or claims systems, we want to provide the user with the means to get the information they need.”
Tying this all together is that partnership that has been established with the IT department and key suppliers in order to drive initiatives through.
