The scale of the pandemic on loss adjusting has been laid bare after Woodgate & Clark reported an unprecedented increase in the number of business interruption claims it has dealt with between March 2020 – February 2021.
A spokesperson for Woodgate & Clark said the huge increase in cases was a ‘game changer’ for loss adjusting, driving significant changes to how the company navigated its way through the surge and providing the industry with plenty of learnings for the future.
“We have worked our way through 75% of the caseload and expect to have completed the majority of this process by the end of the summer,” they said, adding: “Dealing with this has been a massive challenge and an incredible learning experience for us all.”
She added: “Of course business interruption is additional to the recent flooding, and other perils we have managed on behalf of our clients.”
“Our approach, which sees each case assigned to a named adjuster who follows the case through from start to finish, has proved to be the best way to work through the cases from a customer perspective as well as the insurers.”
“Policyholders feel looked after; they can ask questions and get the right information from a real person, which makes sense because these are complex claims, especially as we’ve needed to navigate our way and develop procedures not just with insurers but with their legal teams as well.
They explained that the high profile of BI has led to much more involvement from lawyers, unlike most claims, but “legal input has been an important factor in helping to apply the Supreme Court judgement to each policy.”
“The Supreme Court judgement back in January was essential in breaking the logjam, and now, following the publication in July of the declaration (a protocol between the FCA and the insurers which sets out how the Supreme Court judgement is interpreted), the industry has been able to clarify certain outstanding policy wordings, which will lead to more cases being settled.”
The priority has been SMEs, however, because “they have less financial resilience than big corporations, who have their own insurance departments making claims all the time. For SMEs the BI claim may be the first they’ve ever made, and they have tended to need the money quickly and needed the most support.”
Contrary to some industry fears, cases referred to the fraud unit have been less than expected.
“We haven’t seen a large incidence of fraud in BI, not least because there has been a lot of support from the authorities by way of grants and loans to businesses and those have been much more susceptible to fraud than insurance claims.”
Turning to the lessons learned, Julie said that while the pandemic is “far from over, at least for us, it was already clear BI needs to be properly explained to policyholders when they take it out.”
“In the event, adjusters have found themselves at the sharp end of explaining what policies do cover or not. That lack of clarity has not only required the input of the Supreme Court but has damaged the reputation of our industry too.”
“We are hugely proud of our adjusting team. We have shown how good our core BI claims proposition is by dealing successfully with a large volume of claims at a high level of competence.”
