Liberty Mutual Insurance

Sourabh Chitrachar

Sourabh Chitrachar is the Regional Vice President/ Director- Asia Technology Strategy & Operations at Liberty Mutual Insurance. He looks into Regional IT Strategy formulation across 7 countries and implementation in close alignment with the Market & Regional Executive Leadership. Sourabh is a business focused IT management professional with solid hands on exposure to IT Strategy, Management, Delivery Engineering & Transformation. He has experience in IT Service Delivery, IT Service Design and Organizational Change Management including offshoring & restructuring.

How has digital transformation benefited insurance or claims processing, or the whole industry itself?

Claims processes, in general, are inward facing as well as external facing but traditional methods were manually intensive.

It's not because we want to make it complicated, it's just because of the fact that with claims there's a loss for the organization or any insurance company, in the case of fraud or taking advantage of the customer. Insurance companies have a lot of commercial insurance as well as retail business now, which has been the primary reason that you need to adhere to regulatory guidelines and to ensure that the loss is prevented and at the same time. If you look at commercial insurance and claims processing, both in general are still quite manually intensive. But with the advent of digital transformation, the methods are shifting. For someone physically visiting versus , like doing it remotely, that's an option and that is kind of helping a little bit. The retail sector has transformed a lot with the use of AI, helping the claims to be processed faster. The claims that took as long as a week to be processed, can now be processed within five to ten minutes. But there are obviously going to be those cases which are more complex which require manual intervention and in the form of assessment as well as underwriting andclaims. It will reduce as well, because the technology and the AI algorithms are evolving. There has been a significant improvement not just in the customer experience, but also in terms of saving time in processing claims. And rather than doing manual claims processing, they could be utilized in doing better risk modeling or better modeling around your loss prevention and and even improving the customer experience. So that's where this landscape or this area of insurance is progressing, especially in motor claims and travel. But when you look at life or health for example, it's a slightly different ballgame because life or health claims are different. When you talk about accidents or disability it's a lot more complicated because you still need to go through assessment via the medical practitioners, the panel, and so on which takes a longer time. However, there are advancements even in that space which is kind of really helping in terms of reducing the duration or processing times for the, for the claims.

What are the challenges faced by insurance companies with the new technologies and how are these helping in mitigating the challenges?

 In the technology landscape, there is a huge adoption of multiple types of technologies.This is there not just in the retail sector but also in the industrial arena. If we take blockchain for example, claim contracts have a whole piece of infrastructure, cloud and overall ecosystem space where you get into more of an embedded insurance space. One of the challenges which you always face is the talent and the adoption of the technologies . When you look at any of these technologies, like a traditional insurance company, you probably will not have those kinds of skills, unless you have paid a lot of emphasis, and you've been forward looking. You have to be focused on ensuring the skill enhancements, but your business is used to a certain kind of way of doing things, like the processes that have been there for years, the tools, and the model. These factors have evolved, but not as much in terms of technology. There is a gap in terms of skill, and that gap can be filled by having a clear talent strategy around it. The Business strategy needs to be drawn out for a period of over three to five years. It is important to know where and how you wanna work as an insurance company. And one of the topics which always comes up is people and technology because this is underlying to most of the work that you want to do. To succeed in the future you should know where you are versus where you want to be in terms of the skill. You can upskill yourself and your team, you can look at vendors that you bring with skill sets who have the domain as well as technology knowledge, or collaborate with a tech player or Fintech player.

Looking at it from a holistic standpoint ensures maximum value. We know that technology evolves every three to five years and then what you have now, and three to five years down the line or seven years down the line, it gets replaced by a new piece of technology. Collaborating, understanding, and driving the decision is what is important. Your leadership needs to be brought into that vision where the outcome will be by delivering a certain technology capability. There will be setbacks, but at the end of the day what matters is that your leadership has the buy in and belief in the success of a program.

Is there any advice you would like to give your counterparts in the industry or anything you would like to share with the readers?

There is no smooth road, it is always bumpy but with a vision and the right support you can move towards progress. For a technology organization to function, you need to work, understand the problems and try to solve them. At the end of the day, what you're driving is a business outcome which needs to be aligned and closely collaborating with your stakeholders at all levels. You need to work to gain knowledge of what you are trying to deliver. So it is not just the technology, but also gaining the business understanding. Lastly, when you look at technology and business boards, there are always going to be changes. You should be able to navigate through those changes with a clear mind and a clear vision. Because it is not necessary that what you have been used to doing will take you further. You need to have a mindset that can change and grow, to deliver meaningful outcomes. typically these three points, one around change, the second one is more around collaboration and understanding. And obviously, the third one is the long term vision, which plays a very important role. And as a leader, you need to hold on to that vision, and also motivate and guide your employees through that vision as you go forward.