Amica Juices Up Claims Response with Advanced Mapping

Editor's note: Insurance & Technology will be profiling each of the four insurance company winners of SMA's Innovation in Action award. Today, we take a look at Great American and Amica; tomorrow, we check in with Western & Southern and Oregon Mutual.

Amica Mutual (Lincoln, R.I.) consistently ranks at or near the top of J.D. Power & Associates rankings for overall service and claims in the P&C insurance arena. The company's latest use of technology to preserve its high stature is the implementation of a graphic information system (GIS), ESRI ArcServer, into its Guidewire ClaimCenter claims system.

The GIS allows Amica to locate quickly and respond just as fast to hail claims, which have been on the rise, according to claims executive department manager Adam Kostecki. A hail swath is overlaid on a map of policies in force, allowing Amica to deploy extra adjusters and claims managers as potentially needed.

"We found this as a potential solution to make sure that we keep our hail claims in check," Kostecki explains. "It gives us a quick idea of where the hail fell, it gives us early ID of claims that might not necessarily be related to that particular event, and allows us to deploy staff efficiently."

The difference between being able to proactively identify and map hail claims instead of waiting for those to be reported to overwhelmed local offices is immense, Kostecki adds. In addition, the data provided from each event can be leveraged to respond to other types of catastrophes.

"The hail swath is one piece of information we can consume," Kostecki says, noting the ESRI's system use in responding to wildfire or claims as well. He's also aware of the potential for this kind of data to be useful elsewhere in the enterprise, but says that the company is sticking to using it in the claims department for the time being.

"We're seeing a lot more we can do with GIS, especially as we analyze past claims data," he says. "I'm sure it will go that way in the future, but we're focused right now on the claims coming in."

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Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio