This session will provide an overall economic outlook of the property/casualty insurance industry. This session will include a high-level look at industry trends and disrupters. The always-popular Robert Hartwig, Ph.D., will provide important insights that will help you manage your company's risk.

Robert Hartwig, Ph.D.

Director, Center for Risk & Uncertainty Management
University of South Carolina

Each year, approximately 3 million third-party injury claims occur in America. Ninety-six percent are low severity common injuries that are well-known in resolution time and compensation.

Despite the simplicity of the claim, 50 percent of these claimants choose to hire an attorney to settle their claims. That means 1.4 million claimants per year pay $9 billion in unnecessary legal fees from their settlements while causing insurance companies to spend an additional $2.25 billion on unnecessary legal fees. Claims also stay open three times as long when attorneys are involved, causing additional claim expenses. Yet, 95 percent of claimants who participated in recent focus groups say they were highly dissatisfied with their settlements whether they hired attorneys or settled their owns claim directly with the insurance company.

This session will discuss ways to alleviate this problem, reduce legal fees and medical costs, and enable claims representatives to work smarter and ultimately turn injured third-party claimants into satisfied claimants who become policyholders. This session will also discuss similarities between the likelihood of a surgeon being sued for medical malpractice and a claimant choosing to hire an attorney for a simple claim and what to do with that knowledge. The session will also present ways to settle claims directly with claimants that result in higher productivity for claim representatives and satisfied, fairly compensated claimants.

This presentation will provide an overview of the unique special investigation unit tools available for insurers to properly investigate, adjust, and resolve property claims when public adjusters are involved. In particular, the presentation will focus on thwarting fraud in the presentation of property claims and the best methods to properly and economically investigate such matters.

Video recordings admitted as evidence become silent witnesses that, and in some cases, are considered of high probative value and can testify more accurately than an eyewitness. However, when subjective interpretations are generated by someone not properly qualified, conclusions can be used as weapons in the courtroom. Forensic video analysis by a qualified expert can prevent inaccurate conclusions and reduce claims. Attendees will learn about the best practices in the scientific community to enhance video images and authenticate video recordings. They will also learn about the application of video forensics in real civil cases.

As the frequency and severity of catastrophic events continue to rise in the United States and abroad, the need for actionable intelligence becomes increasingly important to insurers for both mitigation and policyholder retention. During this session, we’ll explore how analytics can help insurers react more quickly during a CAT event, triage the most extreme damage, and benchmark themselves against their peers and the industry to improve performance.

Insurers across the country are seeing an increase in medical providers seeking reimbursement under automobile policies and state no-fault statutes for personal protective equipment- and COVID-related clean-up charges. However, most automobile insurance policies and state no-fault statutes do not address reimbursement for PPE- and COVID-related clean-up charges. The question of whether such charges are compensable under no-fault remains unanswered in many jurisdictions. In addition, submission of PPE- and COVID-related clean-up charges often results in questionable and inflated charges that may warrant further investigation. This presentation is designed to educate special investigation unit and claims professionals in the best practices of determining whether said charges are reimbursable and how to combat the legitimacy of said charges.