Video reports from site capture the full picture faster and pre-empt disputes
Independent Inspections (II Ltd) offers full-service outsourced claims management, providing expert validation for UK insurers, covering escape of water, fire, flooding and accidental damage.
The company has deployed smartphone video technology from eviid to enable inspectors in the field to capture detail-rich video and audio reports on their smartphones and feed these instantly into a central claims management system.
Andy Nolan, Group Head of Information Technology, explains: “eviid has given us, our clients and their customers end-to-end visibility of a whole claim. Our inspectors were a bit hesitant at first about using the technology, but it has quickly become second nature to them. They run through a script that makes it very easy to capture and narrate even quite complicated claims.
“The audiovisual report is uploaded into our central system within seconds for desktop review and the inspector can move on to the next job. The whole process is a lot more efficient and we’re already seeing significantly shorter lifecycles of claims, which of course impacts on cost per claim and customer/policyholder satisfaction.” capturing the impossible to describe – and the important to prove The “show and tell” principle is particularly useful for hard-to-describe scenarios. A recent example is a freak incident involving a ray of sunlight entering through a skylight, a dangerously angled shaving mirror and a burnt carpet. This highly unusual set of circumstances would have required a long essay to do it justice, but was easily captured on video from various angles, clearly showing how the damage occurred.
eviid is also used by the company’s UK-wide network of sub-contractors who record pre- and post-job video reports for audit and evidential purposes. This has drastically reduced the number of complaints and disputes, just through the availability of clear evidence. For example, when a door is installed, a customer may claim that the installation has damaged their wall. A pre-installation video will now show any pre-existing damage, ensuring swift resolution of the dispute and protecting the contractor. super-fast deployment Integrating with smartphones was completely new for II Ltd. Previously, photos had been taken on a camera, producing still photographs in not very good quality. These then had to be laboriously retrieved from the camera and added to written reports.
After an initial training session, eviid was rolled out swiftly across the whole team of 50 inspectors and 10 sub-contractors. Thanks to the familiarity of the standard devices used, the new system was deployed in just over a week. To help inspectors and fitters get used to eviid, II Ltd mapped out a model visit that runs through an inspection step by step. seamless integration into existing systems While the roll-out happened very fast, joint effort had been put in behind the scenes to integrate eviid seamlessly into the company’s existing systems and processes (i.e. Pulse). This means claims managers are able to instantly view, share or audit video reports of a claim at the click of a button within their Pulse interface.
Clients (insurance companies) can view video reports of an inspection within minutes of it having taken place, along with any related documentation – all via a single, secure online portal. built-in data, built-in data protection eviid-generated footage carries patented tamper-evident watermarks, including date, time and GPS location of each frame. This ensures the footage cannot be manipulated without trace and is easily verifiable. It also means inspectors don’t have to worry about adding this information manually – which is great to ensure a gapless audit trail.
The eviid system makes it difficult to – accidentally or on purpose – break data protection legislation, as it tightly controls the sharing of footage (for example, while taken on a standard smartphone, footage captured through eviid does not show up in the device’s image/video gallery and is only stored locally for as long as is necessary to securely file it).
Also built into the system are controls that allow the II Ltd team to limit the number of views of a video when sharing it externally, as well as limiting the time the video is available for viewing. looking ahead Building on the success of eviid so far, the company is now looking into expanding its use of the technology to quickly validate claims during surge events, as well as using eviid’s live streaming capabilities for complex cases, where experts or loss adjusters can be “patched in” for advice and second opinions without having to travel to the site of a claim.
“Eviid has enabled us to provide added value to our clients and do things we’ve not been able to do before. No-one else in our space can offer this level of visibility and accountability, so it’s keeping us ahead of the game. Without giving too much away, I believe the real game-changer will be the next phase, which will enable us to respond with never-before-seen agility to major surges. Watch this space.” - Andy Nolan, Group Head of Information Technology at II Ltd