Claims Management Will Get Insurer Investments In 2022 And 2023

Which core capabilities are likely to be on the receiving end of investment increases in the coming year? Claims management systems came in as the third most frequently mentioned in our list of 12 insurance and financial services capabilities.[i] That’s because as the number of insured risks rise, the volume — and oftentimes severity — of insurance claims can only go in one direction: up.

And with 29% of companies planning more funding for claims management system into 2023 (and likely wondering how to get the best payback on that investment), The Forrester Wave™: P&C Claims Management Systems, Q2 2022 will come in handy.

Claim Management System Capabilities Adapt To Changing Claim Landscape

Last year, we looked at 27 different vendors and their offerings, publishing our take on the broad property and casualty (P&C) claims management landscape in Forrester’s Now Tech: P&C Claims Management Systems, Q4 2021. We then dug into 27 capabilities of 14 of those vendors, including three who are new to the Forrester Claims Management Wave: eBaoTech, RGI, and Salesforce.

Then, Forrester evaluated the functionality of the systems that the 14 vendors were currently offering. We assessed claims decisioning and automation, the breadth of their APIs, claimant communications, and more. Our team delved into their strategies, too. We looked at how the vendor involved users in new feature creation and how well they delivered on their new feature promises. To cap it all off, we talked to more than 40 of their customer references.

Five Things Stood Out In Our 2022 Evaluation

  1. Our Leaders category grew. Two leaders from 2020 — Guidewire and TCS — are still Leaders in 2022, but two additional vendors crossed into Leader territory: Majesco and Riskonnect. Majesco stood out because of its decisioning and native robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities. Riskonnect excelled in its risk-claims chassis strategy and third-party data capture.
  2. Claim servicing outliers are grabbing attention. There are only so many top-tier P&C carriers. Smart claims management vendors and their deployment partners are investing in features, deployment options, and servicing to appeal to a broader range of claim providers. These include retained risk groups like municipalities and school systems; third-party administrators (TPAs) that handle claims processing for new insurance startups; and self-insured entities like retailers and trucking firms.
  3. Getting settlement funds into claimant hands is near instant and form-rich. The real moment of truth for a claimant is getting the settlement fast and in the form they want. Checks and ACH are so yesterday. Now, it’s Venmo. And claims management vendors are taking advantage of API integrations to make claim distributions fast, easy, and secure. Snapsheet forged the path for better claim payment options back in 2020, and other vendors we evaluated this year are now following suit.
  4. Documentation quality of upcoming release notes is a frustration. This year, we looked at vendor update tooling and documentation. What stood out? The vendors talked a lot about configuration migration, automated test tools, and QA testing platforms. But very few talked about one aspect of the update process: documentation of what’s coming in a new release well enough in advance so that customers can begin planning for it. Some vendors were very good — others, not so much. Issues ranged from not getting release notes at all, not getting them in time, or having to ask multiple times to myriad vendor service team members to get them. Regardless of the reason, this perceived lack of a release note process screams for vendor attention.
  5. Formal RFP processes are worth the time and effort. My first research focus when I joined Forrester 15 years ago was on the sale of tech to insurance buyers. Multiple interviews with insurance tech buyers back then led to a startling conclusion: Don’t bank on the comfortable relationships you have with vendor sales reps when they move on to new companies, and don’t rely on past experiences so much so that you skip the formal procurement and vendor vetting processes. Yes, it’s time-consuming and exhausting, but a few references this year regretted the shortcuts their firms took to move (at least in theory) faster.

Want to hear more about what we learned? Forrester subscriber clients can book an inquiry or a more in-depth guidance session here.

[i] Source: Forrester’s Priorities Survey, 2022; Base: 131 global business and technology professionals in financial services and/or insurance