The Irish statesman and Nobel peace prize winner John Hume died earlier this month. An architect of the Good Friday Agreement, John Hume was a conviction politician, convinced that “agreement threatens no one.”
When nationalist Martin McGuiness and unionist Rev Ian Paisley agreed a power-sharing deal in 2007, their very act of shaking hands was an achievement few people thought would ever happen. As his obituaries made clear, that handshake was the result of John Hume’s decades-long commitment to peace. Northern Ireland had to be for both unionists and nationalists and it had to be done in a way that was peaceful.
John Hume’s example has some powerful lessons for us working in the claims industry. How so? Our justice system is founded on the adversarial principle: a claimant goes to court, seeking settlement from the defendant, and both parties abide by the judge’s decision.
But it is increasingly clear that adversarialism in claims is letting down consumers and it is time we took a more Hume-like approach. Litigation adds cost, takes far too long, and often causes distress to the claimant. John Hume would surely note that the two sides, claimant and defendant, are fighting over the same customer.
In recent years technology has become a great leveller in claims, and its use has been accelerated by Covid-19. Without technology, most claims would have ground to a halt during the lockdown.
Agreement between the ABI and ACSO ensured that remote rehab and remote medical reports could continue using technology, so enabling injured people to recover. And the early evidence is that customers liked remote medical reports and remote treatment – convenient, hassle-free and productive.
It would be interesting to see how the public in general, and claimants in particular, view technology use in the claims journey now that Covid-19 has made its use ubiquitous. Research sponsored by Minster Law in 2018 found a near 50:50 split between claimants happy to settle their claim digitally, and those who prefer the human touch.
Of course, digital claims bring potential pitfalls, such as a risk of more fraud, but if the entire claims industry could operate a handbrake turn and move to wholly remote working in a matter of weeks, it can’t be beyond us to come up with a means of reducing fraud incidence if we use technology more.
In truth, the key blockage to a more consensual approach to looking after consumers making a claim is ourselves. Caution is a thing in claims, and what would lawyers – claimant and defendant - do if litigation became a thing of the past?
These days, most insurer claims processes are fairly well-oiled machines, so disrupting them is tricky. And it remains a central to our society, and a basic human right, that disagreements between parties have the option of a hearing in Court.
John Hume played the long game to bring about lasting peace in Northern Ireland, ultimately resolving a problem that long looked intractable. The claims industry may wish to play a long game too, but Covid-19 has opened up the opportunity for a progressive, consensual, tech-enabled approach to managing the claims industry. For the sake of consumers, we must grab it.