All About ClearAI®: Celebrating The 7-Minute Clear Claims™ Case

One Bad Word

There’s only one bad word in the auto insurance dictionary: claims. Nobody likes them, and nobody wants to deal with them. Unfortunately, agents often find themselves deeply involved in claim resolutions involving their clients and those clients' carriers. As a result, agents are pulled away from revenue-generating activities and are often left with unhappy clients due to the protracted nature of the claims process.

Aaron Wheaton, Clearcover’s SVP of Claims, has more than fifteen years of experience working in insurance claims. He says, “Agents have costs to run their business and should focus their precious resources on growing their business profitably; they shouldn't worry about looking over the shoulder of the claims organization. The more that we can avoid the bring-me-up-to-speed or tell-me-what's-going-on bit and proactively address these things, the better off we're all going to be in the end.”

Age Means Opportunity

Filing an auto insurance claim has never been a straightforward task. Beginning with the incident, a driver must submit the First Notice of Loss. From there, an adjuster is assigned to the claim, initiates contact, and follows up with investigation where necessary to confirm the information shared is accurate. Once all of the facts are gathered, the file is reviewed and a payment is issued to the driver. Depending on the severity of the claim, this process could traditionally take weeks or even months.

Wheaton says, “The industry's one hundred twenty-five years old at this point.(1) Things haven't really changed in terms of how claims are processed. You still have a loss that occurs and then you're determining the appropriate amount to indemnify affected parties who are covered by the policy.”

But that belabored system, Wheaton argues as he holds up his smartphone, is ripe for disruption. He explains, “The fact is you have folks walking around with that digital capability in their pocket to engage with you in resolving that claim. It’s the same process, but they can do it faster, virtually, and with greater accuracy than ever before.”

The Data Impact

And it’s all about data. Big data. Data that can be harvested and evaluated by artificially intelligent machine learning to create predictive models and real-time decision making. The kind of data that is supplied by a policyholder during a call to their insurance carrier to open a claim.

Wheaton says, “When you apply machine learning capabilities, identify trends, or build models that leverage the treasure trove of data that we have, you can either remove the human from that decision-making process, or you can complement the judgment they're applying to their claim to arrive at the right decision faster.”

And ClearAI®, Clearcover’s proprietary machine learning technology, does just that. More specifically, it’s what ClearAI’s® data model, Clear Claims™, has been trained to do.

Clear Claims™ represents a distinct feature of Clearcover’s policy offering. While ClearAI® is the machine learning technology that powers the assessment of fraud risk and the complexity of the claim, Clear Claims™ determines if a specific claim is eligible for expedited payment.

“We receive hundreds, thousands of data points,” Wheaton continues. “They feed the Clear Claims™ models. The Clear Claims™ models are constantly retraining to provide us with actionable insights on that particular claim.”

Seven Minutes in (Claims) Heaven

And that’s how a $2,304.86 collision claim in Ohio in January 2021 was resolved within seven minutes—the same amount of time it took to resolve a $1,858.92 U-turn claim in Kentucky this May and an $883.19 animal strike claim from Texas in June. Before machine learning and process virtualization, Wheaton estimates these claims could each have taken up to seven to ten days to close, possibly even two weeks, depending on the amount of phone tag between the claimant and adjuster.

Wheaton explains, “Through the process of reporting that they were involved in the accident, [the policyholder] uploaded photos of their vehicle. When they clicked submit, the information went over to ClearAI® and it was run through our fraud models and our Clear Claims™ model. The determination was made by the algorithm to say, ‘Not worried about this one. This is valid. Here's the applicable deductible, and payment is immediately issued electronically back to that customer.’ To think that somebody was involved in an accident, an auto accident, and had money directly deposited into their account within seven minutes, that's incredible.”

And there were a few other individuals who never had to pick up the phone: insurance agents.

“Digitizing means the First Notice of Loss doesn't go to the agent or the CSR within the agent’s office. That's a point of contact and probably thirty minutes away from a CSR’s time. Time is money. Effort is money. If they get their time back, that goes toward things that matter like writing more high-quality business—ideally with Clearcover. Now their operations are more efficient and their margins improve, which enables them to reinvest in their businesses and grow with us.”

Saving Through Speed

Wheaton emphasizes seven minutes is just the start. As ClearAI® continues to evaluate new claim data, the technology will refine the predictive models, essentially becoming more intelligent.

“Not all of our claims are paid in seven minutes, but more and more will [be] over time, and more of the right claims will get paid in seven minutes over time. That's where we're heading. We've proven that it's possible.”

As ClearAI® continues to improve, customers and agents will reap the rewards of faster, more efficient claims resolution that allows them to focus their time on what matters. For customers, that means getting back on the road. For agents, that means focusing on revenue-generating activities for their businesses.

If you’re interested in learning more about ClearAI® or the Clear Claims™ model, visit clearcover.com/AI.

(1) Travelers Insurance Company issued the very first auto insurance policy in the U.S. in 1898 to a doctor named Truman J. Martin of Buffalo, New York. That first policy gave Dr. Martin $5,000 in liability coverage and cost him $12.25.