Digitising Excess Protection claims

Excess protection is the focus for our current series which looks at our hero products in the ancillary insurance market. Jared Drucker is Commercial Manager at Coplus with over 15 years underwriting expertise. He’s looking at the considerations for designing and managing Excess Protection schemes.

The first thing Jared explains is that Excess Protection is a really simple proposition. “It’s such a straightforward product; when there is an excess on a main insurance this cover can be used to refund that money, or in the case of excess reduction pay some of the excess, back to the policyholder in the event of a claim." 

There are many different types of proposition that Excess Protection can be used for. Home and Motor are the obvious ones but almost any type of insurance with an excess can work with an excess protection policy.

However as Jared points out whilst it’s simple and straightforward there is also great scope for innovation. “With a policy like Excess Protection there are no excuses for a difficult claims journey. Normally proof of an excess being deducted is required and then the claim is paid. The policyholder has already gone through an insurance claim so the last thing they want is to be faced with lots of paperwork or effort to get their Excess Protection benefit.

“It’s important to us that it’s as easy as possible for policyholders to claim. Product utilisation, especially in ancillaries is vital. The reporting on value measures now highlights where products aren’t giving benefits to customers. We work with all our partners to ensure the policyholder gets value from the policy they have purchased. 

“That’s why we’re innovating in claims handling for excess protection using developments like Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and other digital tools. This means we can provide a 100% digital journey in claims for Excess Protection, if that’s what the customer wants, but our claims team are on the phone too for anything more complex or if that’s the customers preference.”

Making sure customers get the benefit of their Excess Protection policies is important but these schemes need to be commercially successful too. From an underwriting perspective it’s all about cost management. Jared continues, “An efficient and stress free claims journey is what we provide to policyholders. Adopting smart technology and processes also means we keep the claims handling costs down. That keeps our pricing competitive and allows our partners to be creative with the propositions they put together with Excess Protection.”

We’re confident we can put together the right scheme for your business – whether it’s excess protection for everyday things like cars or pets to more specialist lines like sailing or surfing.

Get in touch to find out more about our wide range of Excess Protection policies.