This session will provide an overall economic outlook of the property/casualty insurance industry and 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

This session qualifies for one FMDC elective or maintenance credit in the Management module.

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.

Lee Fogle

Founder and CEO
RecovX Health

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.

Joseph Nett

Senior Associate
Brand & Tapply, LLC

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.

Michael Primeau

Forensic Video Analyst
Primeau Forensics

As the frequency and severity of catastrophic events continue to rise across the globe, the need for actionable intelligence is increasingly important to insurers for mitigation and policyholder retention. During this session, we’ll explore how analytics can help insurers react more quickly during a CAT event, deploy resources more effectively while reducing fraud leakage, and benchmark against other insurers to drive systematic performance improvements.

Ryan Park Grant

Principal Product Manager
Guidewire

Zachary Gustafson

General Manager, Claims & InsuranceNow
Guidewire

Insurers are underutilizing their claims data. As an engineer who spent more than a decade in the claims industry working with many major insurers, Paul Okrutny knows most claims data is not granular enough to include true causes of loss. While insurers know water and fuel oil claims amount to sizable losses within their portfolio, they rarely capture the cause of their plumbing failures or fuel oil leaks in a structured way. The lack of claims data structure prevents the insurer from reviewing, tracking, and understanding its causes of loss at scale. A more granular understanding of claims data unlocks opportunities for insurers to improve their pricing strategy, make more accurate coverage decisions, offer prevention programs, and boost their subrogation. This webinar will discuss how best-in-class insurers capture claims data and show that higher data granularity is achievable by utilizing process improvements, robotic process automation, or simply by improving the cause-of-loss structured data categories.

Paul Okrutny

Co-founder and CEO
Mitigateway

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.

Shahan Kapitanyan

Senior Associate
Brand & Tapply, LLC

Hurricanes, tornadoes, and severe storms pose big challenges for insurers because of their unpredictable impacts and rapid influx of claims. With so much riding on claims service, inefficient planning and processing can threaten customer satisfaction, brand reputation and financial performance. Join this webinar to learn how to prepare for big claims events and execute more efficiently. You’ll hear firsthand how state-of-the-art technology is helping organizations better predict and prepare, more effectively allocate resources, and delight customers.

Abhishek Mishra

Vice President, Product Management & Product Sales, Rapid Damage Assessment Claims Platform
Swiss Re

Inefficiency and ineffectiveness in an insurance claims department are a bit like a boat at sea that has a hole in the hull and is taking on water. The skipper is trying to move forward, but the leak keeps slowing it down. An insurance claim may get off to a great start, but time constraints and complex processes can bog down even the most experienced claims adjuster. When adjusters cannot be agile, claims take longer and get more expensive. Before you know it, the actual cost of a claim is much larger than anticipated, resulting in claims leakage. Based on data from 2021-2022, claims costs are increasing by $18 billion year-over-year. This figure suggests the hole in the hull of the boat will only get larger. With the right technology, namely automation and artificial intelligence, implemented the right way - claims leakage is a solvable problem. During this webinar, attendees will hear customer success stories of leveraging automation and AI to improve claims management and reduce leakage. They will leave with an understanding of how different components of automation and AI can augment claims teams, therefore improving employee experience and overcoming the talent crisis. Attendees will also learn about digital coworkers - what they are and why they’re a revolutionary step beyond traditional automation technology.

John Cottongim

Co-founder & CTO
Roots Automation

Chaz Perera

Co-founder & CEO
Roots Automation

During this webinar, we will review and analyze emerging issues and discuss how they may affect the work being performed by loss adjusters.

Elise Farnham

President
Illumine Consulting

This session will discuss how companies can optimize their resources during a catastrophe response. Attendees will learn how to understand the scope of a catastrophe and how to use and maximize the correct resources to ensure the quickest response times. The session will also cover the importance of creating a connected digital ecosystem to integrate communications between carriers, contractors, and policyholders.

Curtis McDonald

Director, Product Management
CoreLogic

Jonathan Schneyer

Senior Catastrophe Response Manager
CoreLogic

James Martonik

Senior Product Engagement Director
CoreLogic

This webinar, led by an attorney with experience as a litigator and as a mediator, will help attendees identify common negotiation pitfalls that lead to miscommunication, stymied negotiations, and unintended results. Attendees will also discover alternative ways to keep mediations moving in a productive direction.

Julia Stuebing

Partner
Dinsmore

Controlling claims costs and enhancing customer experience remain top priorities for insurance carriers. During this session, Aite-Novarica will share research and industry perspectives on ideal use cases for straight-through processing as well as how STP can reduce the cost of a claim and contribute to the overall profitability of a line of business. We’ll discuss some of the goals and steps involved in establishing STP as well as technology being used to enable STP.

Carey Geaglone

Senior Principal
Aite-Novarica Group

In today’s competitive environment, insurance carriers need to deploy knowledgeable adjusters quickly in order to be successful. In this program, we will explore strategies that will speed up the learning process for newly hired claim practitioners. We will discuss strategies that will assist supervisors to be more effective and supportive of the training strategies.

Elise Farnham

President
Illumine Consulting

Proactive subrogation can impact claims processes and adjustment procedures to maximize the likelihood of positive recovery outcomes. Certain factual and legal realities can have drastic impacts on a carrier’s ability to successfully recover from negligent parties while still maintaining the contractual obligations to the insured who experienced the initial loss. This session will identify potential subrogation roadblocks, point out where to find contractual provisions that could affect subrogation, and examine legal strategies to make sure the carrier is in the best position during and following claims adjustment to successfully recover against the tortfeasor.

Joshua Davis

Litigation Partner
Baker Sterchi Cowden & Rice, LLC

Tom Kammerer

Associate Attorney
Baker Sterchi Cowden & Rice, LLC

Deposition questions come in many forms—open-ended questions, yes/no questions, yes/no questions that are not really yes/no questions, compound questions, questions about documents—the list could go on. This interactive session will provide examples of these types of questions as well as strategies for answering them so the transcript accurately reflects what you wanted to say.

Julia Stuebing

Partner
Dinsmore

Policyholders and claimants want to be treated well and have insurers pay claims in a way that they believe is promptly and correctly. Yet, claims professionals commonly use words and phrases that can tear down trust. Based on his book "Negotiation Skills for the Claims Professional," Carl Van will demonstrate negotiation skills that even the most seasoned claims negotiators will find enlightening and valuable. He will focus on techniques that will help attendees gain confidence and credibility; present settlement figures appropriately; and instill a sense of trust on the part of the customer.

Carl Van, ITP

President & CEO
International Insurance Institute, Inc.