Client Royal & SunAlliance Challenge Royal & SunAlliance looked for a technology solution to improve its performance on personal injury claims. In common with many other insurers, the group was facing a rising tide of claims for injuries in its personal and commercial insurance divisions. But there was little consistency in the way claims were valued, there was leakage as a result of excessive payments and there was little management information available to help control the situation. Solution Royal & SunAlliance installed Colossus at key sites in Halifax and Leeds Colossus was then rolled out to all 15 UK sites, enabling 300 claims handlers to make fair and consistent assessments of personal injury claims. By 2002, Royal & SunAlliance had over 750 trained Colossus users. Results Substantial savings achieved on personal injury claims costs Fair and consistent valuation of personal injury claims possible Improved management information Better training for new claims staff. For more information: To learn more about CSC's offerings, please contact us.

Top international insurance group Royal & SunAlliance achieved substantial savings on its UK personal injury payouts through using CSC’s Colossus claims assessment system – and confidently renewed its contract with CSC.

Royal & SunAlliance is one of the world’s largest insurance groups. It was created in 1996 through the merger of two major, long-established UK insurance companies – Royal and Sun Alliance. The Sun was established in 1710 and is the oldest insurance company still operating under its original name. The Sun merged with the Alliance, which was founded in 1824, and then with the Royal, which was founded in 1845.

The Royal & SunAlliance group is one of the world’s top three property and casualty (P&C) insurers. It has more than 20 million customers in 130 countries. Restructuring plans announced in 2002 reduced the group’s scale, but Royal & SunAlliance remains a substantial international player with net written premiums of about £5.5 billion and a staff of 27,000.

Royal & SunAlliance has adopted a global business model based on best group practices in each of its main areas of activity, and facilitated by technology. The model is designed to ensure that the group is customer focused and responsive to changing market needs – and consistently able to deliver good shareholder value.

Solution Sought to Reduce Leakage
After the merger – and in an increasingly challenging financial services market place – Royal & SunAlliance looked for a technology solution to improve its performance on personal injury claims. In common with many other insurers, the group was facing a rising tide of claims for injuries in its personal and commercial insurance divisions. But there was little consistency in the way claims were valued, there was leakage as a result of excessive payments and there was little management information available to help control the situation.

John Thomson, Royal & SunAlliance’s Claims Operations Manager - Halifax, says: “Parts of the company had previously looked at CSC’s Colossus claims assessment system but, for various reasons, had not implemented it. After the merger, market pressures led Royal & SunAlliance to evaluate a business case for Colossus. Like most companies, we did a closed-file review using Colossus as well as an internal manual review of our claims and processes – so, before we signed up for Colossus, we had established that there was leakage which was difficult to manage given the limited management information. The data that became available through Colossus gave us a very clear picture of the leakage and how it varied from site to site.”

Royal & SunAlliance installed Colossus at key sites in Halifax and Leeds in February 1999. By the end of September, Colossus was rolled out to all 15 UK sites, enabling 300 claims handlers to make fair and consistent assessments of personal injury claims. By 2002, Royal & SunAlliance had over 750 trained Colossus users.

Delivery Meets All Expectations
John Thomson says: “Colossus has certainly delivered! There’s no question that it delivered up to expectations and possibly even beyond.

The savings against the original benchmark are there. It’s been good value for money. There are also softer benefits, such as the ability to train new staff rapidly to an acceptable level of claims handling.”

During the initial contract period, Colossus achieved significant savings on claims settlements.

“There was quite a variation between sites and even within sites,” says John Thomson. “Our people get a lot of training and those handling injuries tend to be very conscientious and committed. But, in the past, internal data was so limited that, to a large extent, people were left to their own devices. It was amazing how settlements varied between two or three people in the same team. Some were up for contesting claims while others were more prepared to compromise and settle. The Colossus platform has raised challenges and we are now looking at improving people’s negotiation skills because, in the past, it was fairly disparate between teams and individuals.”

Colossus Heads Off Competition in Six Month Evaluation
With the date for contract renegotiation looming in 2002, Royal & SunAlliance ran a six-month evaluation with a competitor’s product alongside Colossus. Two claims teams, in Halifax and Birmingham, processed live claims on the competitor’s system while their colleagues continued working with Colossus.

John Thomson says: “Following this detailed comparison, we decided to stay with the proven product – it had delivered. However, one of the changes that we agreed with CSC for the renewed contract was that we would buy-in to future development of Colossus, so that we can move our system forward as new technology comes on stream. We want to be on top of this game and we want a very clear relationship so that we can take it forward.”

CSC is now working with Royal & SunAlliance to meet a timetable for upgrading some of the core processes of the existing Colossus installation. Royal & SunAlliance will migrate to a more recent release with an architecture that eases integration between Colossus and Royal & SunAlliance’s other mainframe systems, and updates the appearance of the system.

John Thomson says: “The new Report Manager within Colossus is a significant step forward in management information terms. It enables us to move away from savings to focusing on average claims costs and time to settle – two of the key measures we look at in terms of assessing our performance these days. It is too early to say whether we have seen any improvements as these new measures have only recently become available within this new reporting tool.”

He says Colossus fits well with the group’s policy of using technology to improve employee performance. “But we must not undermine the skills of our people. It’s a complement of technology and skills – it’s not about de-skilling, but more about re-skilling and the way they do their jobs.”

As part of its recent restructuring, Royal & SunAlliance has combined its personal and commercial claims activities. John Thomson says: “We are looking to unravel all parts of injury-related work that isn’t already on Colossus – substantially it is, but we want to maximise the use of Colossus. We are looking at parts of the claims process and how those can be better handled. In the next five to six years we’ll be moving the game forward, that’s for sure.”