Claims Advocacy Service Promoted as Efficiency Driver
Australian Financial Risk Management’s claims advocacy service has driven greater efficiencies within its business, according to the risk-focussed advice practice.
In a release promoting the value of its service, AFRM Claims Advocacy(ACA) CEO, Bruno Muraca, gave context to this relatively new service initiative against the backdrop of the Life Insurance Framework reform environment.
Muraca identified what he referred to as the seemingly contradictory need for advice businesses to reduce costs (due to the impact of the LIF reforms) while at the same time improve their service delivery.
He said every adviser knows the time it can take collating all the information needed to file an insurance claim, including:
Time taken discussing the claim with the client
Obtaining medicals and appropriate medical reports
Gathering policy details
Time talking with the insurer and with physicians
The constant follow ups to get the documentation through to support the claim
Muraca said ACA can deliver measurable efficiency improvements, claiming the service could save an adviser’s practice up to ten hours in time taken processing a straight forward insurance claim and significantly more for more involved TPD claims.
“If we consider the hourly rate for advisers and also administration staff, then ten hours per claim can add up to significant costs on the practice. Freeing up advisers’ time means they have more time to focus on business development,” he said.
Why pay up to 40% of your benefit in legal fees when it is simply not necessary?
Muraca also stated his argument as to why advisers and consumers should opt for claims advocacy services such as ACA rather than to engage lawyers. He says once ACA starts working with clients on behalf of advisers, clients are reassured and less likely to adopt the more costly and time consuming course of engaging lawyers to advise on the claim:
“Lawyers provide invaluable services to the community but to bring them in simply to process and insurance claim, I respectfully suggest, is not the most efficient use of time and resources.” said Muraca, who added, “Why pay up to 40% of your benefit in legal fees when it is simply not necessary? The advisers we work with say working with us is a much more user-friendly process, and often the claim process is 2-3 months quicker than if it goes legal.”
