The Client
Lercari Group is one of the world’s oldest loss-adjusting businesses. Founded in Italy in 1879, the company delivers and optimizes after-sales insurance services that lengthen the value chain, while providing a personalized approach to claim management. With more than a century of experience, the company has grown to over 300 employees in 18 offices across Europe. Internationally, it became a member of the respected Sedgwick Alliance of insurance providers in June 2020.
As a frontrunner in in harnessing insurtech to maximize operational efficiency and improve policyholder satisfaction, Lecari Group sought a new way to support its customers in underwriting and risk transfer, as well as in the management of after-sales service, crisis situations, and emerging risks.
The Challenge
For much of its history, Lercari Group loss adjusters traveled to visit customers in person to file claims, a process that extended the life cycle of a claim from days to weeks and strained company resources during busy cycles. Lengthy claims resolution times, much of it attributable to this required travel and facetime involved, made it difficult for Lercari Group to optimize customer experiences and control costs.
"The insurance industry is constantly evolving its digital landscape, even more so now,” managing director Giovanni Lercari said.
The company sought an enterprise-level solution that would reduce travel, improve adjusters’ efficiency, and pave the way for future digital innovations in claims management. The solution also needed to facilitate a frictionless customer experience that would not compromise its reputation for loss assessments of excellence.
The need to accelerate the desired transition toward virtual claim inspections was made all the more urgent with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. When Italy quickly became Europe’s hardest-hit country, social distancing measures made in-person visits impossible, requiring Lercari Group to quickly scale-up its digital solutions.
The Solution
For several years, Lercari Group has used SightCall to deliver its Video Perizia service to national and international clients, with extraordinary results. The company was attracted to SightCall’s seamless integration capabilities and rapid setup time. Dozens of Lecari Group’s experts, each with at least three years of feild experience were able to access the platform within days.
Using SightCall, Lecari Group was able to respond to requests within twelve hours from the time they received a claim. Utilizing tools such as an interactive interface with augmented reality capabilities, allows them to point, screen-share, and annotate, as well as leverage security features such as geolocation to confirm the exact GPS coordinates of a claim.
Adjusters can collect clear images useful for detailed assessments with a high degree of accuracy. The stability of the connection allows them to maintain open communication with the insured. With benefits like Smart Optical Character Recognition, experts are also able to collect and read data from a smartphone and instantly feed it back to the claim file, eliminating error-prone manual entry and easing data-sharing between all participants.
Benefits
From the launch of Video Perizia with SightCall, Lercari Group’s customer satisfaction rates and net promoter scores (NPS) have soared. Insureds describing a favorable claims experience has increased from the mid-80s to over 90% since 2018. Travel distances for adjusters decreased from more than 500 kilometers a week to around 250, resulting in significant cost savings for Lercari. Now, in-person site visits are reserved only for the most complicated claims.
SightCall’s full compliance with data regulations like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) eliminates the need for different platforms in multiple countries. Consistent, safe handling of sensitive data provided peace of mind for all parties in the claims process.
The client’s expert consultants found they were able to dramatically scale up remote assistance whenever needed. With the unpredictability of COVID-19 came a need for complete reliance on virtual claims assistance. Even with a large surge of video call volume, there were no issues with bandwidth capabilities. Continued claims management, now near 100% digital, was possible with minimal-to-no disruption to company operations and quality assurance.
Managing director Giovanni Lercari observed, “Our adoption of video expertise and its integration with SightCall has allowed us to have total mastery and knowledge, generating a series of benefits for the supply chain and for our Group, even in a time of global emergency.”
Among those benefits included the ability to operate without geographical limits and in total safety throughout the territory covered by the company.
“In the context of COVID-19, SightCall kept our supply chain from being interrupted,” added TPA project manager Magdalena Szwalbe. “The most important benefit for us is related to insurance companies, who are our first clients. Without SightCall, it wouldn’t be possible to provide services to insurers, who in turn couldn’t provide services to their claimants/clients in order to finalize claim proceedings.”