JERSEY CITY, N.J., JUNE 11, 2001 — Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO) has enhanced its ISO Claims Outcome AdvisorTM bodily-injury claims-management system to help insurers more accurately determine reserves, evaluate claim-settlement patterns and improve consistency and fairness in settling claims.
Three tools — Reserve Manager, Audit Manager and Settlement Analyzer — will enhance an insurer's ability not only to manage individual claims, but also to better manage the business overall, according to ISO Senior Vice President Richard P. Boehning.
ISO Claims Outcome Advisor (COA) provides information on 12,700 medical conditions and 14,000 occupations to help claims adjusters manage the unique and complex medical, legal and occupational issues presented by bodily-injury claims and to help determine the most favorable financial outcome.
Reserve Manager helps reduce one of the greatest uncertainties in insurance companies' financial operations — reserves for long-tail business claims. Reserve Manager does that by combining information about the severity of an injury — a standard measure that can be used even for the most recent claims — with statistical information from the company's existing settled claims in the COA database. A company can use the combined information to arrive at a final monetary amount for all open bodily-injury claims.
Audit Manager helps ensure consistent handling of claims and settlements that are both fair to the claimant and cost-effective for the company, reflecting company-defined guidelines. Audit Manager provides reports by office and by individual claims professional, revealing information on amounts of settlements outside company norms, the time it takes to settle claims, and claims professionals' need for further training in medical knowledge or claims-settlement negotiation.
Settlement Analyzer helps derive a fair and equitable assessment based on injury severity and the company's defined general-damage dollar value assigned to the severity by geographic region. Using Settlement Analyzer, actuaries and key claim-management personnel can adjust the company-defined settlement range as company data accumulate.
"What we have developed with these three new tools comes from listening to our customers and surveying the needs of our marketplace," Boehning said. "With the addition of Reserve Manager, Audit Manager and Settlement Analyzer, COA is an excellent management system on three levels. The adjuster can use it to settle claims. The audit manager can use it to review a number of cases. And the company can use it to follow settlement patterns and trends, making adjustments to its guidelines as needed."
ISO is a leading source of information, products and services related to property and liability risk. For a broad spectrum of commercial and personal lines of insurance, ISO provides statistical, actuarial, underwriting and claims information and analyses; consulting and technical services; policy language; and information about specific locations. In the United States and around the world, ISO serves insurers and reinsurers, as well as agents, brokers, self-insureds, risk managers, insurance regulators and other government agencies.
Release: Immediate
Contacts:
Giuseppe Barone / Erica Helton
MWW Group (for ISO)
201-507-9500
gbarone@mww.com / ehelton@mww.com