New Florida Law Mandates Carriers to Resolve Claims Faster
Puts Focus on Carrier Responsiveness – Digital Communication Improves Adjusters’ Timeliness, Efficiency
Boston, MA – July 26, 2023 – The 2023 Hurricane season puts added pressure on carriers servicing the Florida Homeowners market now that the passing of Senate Bill 2-A has amended Florida’s Prompt Pay Laws. Among the new law’s provisions, the statute mandates carriers to acknowledge, resolve and pay new claims faster.
Customer claims issues, especially after Hurricane Ian, led to public frustration and ultimately forced the State to pass a law that cuts in half—from 14 days to seven—the time carriers must respond to new claims. Response time can be especially challenging after a hurricane as CAT events typically result in a higher claims volume. To comply, adjusters need powerful tools to handle claims at this large scale.
Hi Marley, creators of the only digital collaboration platform built for the P&C insurance industry, recently researched the correlation between a claim adjuster’s responsiveness and its effect on the customer experience and claims handling process. The research analyzed customer data tied to a representative sample of 100 high caseload adjusters from across Hi Marley’s carrier partners, including more than 2,500 customer satisfaction survey responses, conversation length and cycle times. The study found that adjusters who engage with customers quickly at the start of the claim are more likely to take an empathetic approach, provide timely service and sustain excellent communication throughout the claims process. By using text messaging, the most responsive adjusters could document the claim earlier, letting the carrier triage events at the time of an incident; this increases the adjuster’s capacity to serve more people in a timely manner, which is crucial following a CAT event.
Whether it’s proactive notifications, submitting a claim or asking questions, Hi Marley found that text messaging has many benefits for both policyholders and insurance carriers when disaster strikes. Offering text messaging during catastrophic events, like hurricanes, allows policyholders to contact their insurer anytime, from anywhere and get support quickly in a time of need—better enabling carriers to comply with the new regulations.
Hi Marley can help with Florida’s stricter communication requirements. The Hi Marley Insurance Cloud enables carriers to easily send and receive media files via text messaging, including photos, videos, PDFs and other important documents. The platform also helps carriers remain compliant by automatically uploading transcripts to the claim file and keeping all communications with the policyholder in a single communication thread.
The platform’s translation feature is another Hi Marley tool built for speed and efficiency. It allows all parties to communicate in their preferred language, automatically translating messages in real-time. Adjusters can communicate directly with the claimant, keeping the conversation going to improve responsiveness and get to a resolution faster.
With the Hi Marley Insurance Cloud, carriers servicing the Florida homeowners’ market can also mitigate loss exposure by sending proactive notifications via text messaging to policyholders about tips and checklists to prepare for catastrophic events before they occur. The outreach can also include real-time updates.
Insureds can also report damage to their property via text and provide all the information needed to open the claim. The policyholder can use their phone to easily document damage, share files, coordinate site visits with adjusters and keep the claims moving forward, saving costs and improving cycle times.
Other parties in the insurance ecosystem can also be added to the Hi Marley conversation to collaborate and eliminate phone tag and wasted time passing messages to others. This compresses the claims cycle time even further.
“Hi Marley’s Collaboration platform is a valuable tool for accelerating outreach and facilitating the claims process in catastrophic situations–especially in high-risk states like Florida,” said Jay Guden, Senior Vice President of Business Operations & Partnerships at Hi Marley. “Hi Marley offers a variety of benefits to ease compliance. The ability to collaborate with multiple parties on a claim in a single text thread while leveraging Hi Marley’s various productivity tools gives adjusters additional capacity when it’s needed most. The result is compressed cycle times, better customer service, improved outcomes and lower carrier costs during extreme events.”
About Hi Marley
Hi Marley is the intelligent communication platform for the insurance industry. Built by people who know and love insurance, the platform enables hassle-free texting across the entire ecosystem, empowering insurance professionals and delighting policyholders. Hi Marley’s industry leading analytics deliver novel insights that fuel continuous improvement. The solution is built for the enterprise – fast to deploy, easy to use and seamlessly integrates with other core systems. Hi Marley empowers the world’s leading insurance carriers to reinvent the customer and employee experience. Learn more at www.himarley.com.
