Independent Inspections Ltd. (IIL), part of the Independent (UK) Group, one of Britain's insurance claims management companies, is teaming up with Tuxedo Money Solutions, one of Britain's pre-eminent payment solutions companies, to enhance the way home insurance claims are settled in the UK.
A significant proportion of Home Insurance claims are settled by paper mandate, cheques, retail store vouchers, gift cards and cash. These settlement methods can be cumbersome with claims taking long periods to settle, extending the life cycle and administrative efforts to track. As such, there are challenges for policyholders and insurance companies with the current settlement options that to a large extent can be mitigated.
As a market leader, IIL was keen to find a solution that was a win-win for both policyholders and clients, which include many of Britain’s biggest insurers. With a track record of success in delivering innovative payment solutions to major blue-chip companies, Tuxedo was invited to help IIL to devise a new approach.
The jointly developed solution will see insurance claims settled almost immediately in the policyholder’s home, with the inspector handing the policyholder a prepaid card during the visit. Cards can be loaded within 24 hours enabling policyholders to buy replacement goods immediately, rather than waiting for the settlement to come through alternate, less secure, mechanisms.
Spend can be unrestricted, restricted to a specific merchant category, a specific merchant (or set of merchants) or even to an individual store if required. This provides a great degree of control and transparency over spend, but allows flexibility on a claim by claim basis to ensure the correct balance of policyholder choice and limit of liability on indemnity spend. It also enables multiple claim streams to be managed under one vehicle through agreement with clients and other supply chain partners to utilise one method of payment.
The prepaid card solution will be integrated into IIL’s systems via Tuxedo’s proprietary Eccount® platform. Tuxedo’s Eccount® platform is a versatile, easily configurable, highly flexible electronic payments platform that integrates seamlessly with third party systems providing a full suite of payment solutions including plastic cards, virtual cards, online payments, mobile payments, contactless payments and much more.
Andrew Lloyd-Jones, CEO of Independent Group comments: "The benefits of this new approach are significant in reducing claim life cycle and enhancing the policyholder experience. As an innovative business, passionate about continuous improvement we wanted to take advantage of advances in payments and digital technology to deliver a more efficient settlement process for policyholders and clients. This also has the high potential to improve policyholder retention for our clients driving brand loyalty through enhanced value during and post claim. By combining our industry expertise with Tuxedo’s expertise in electronic payments, we believe we have developed a solution that will set a new standard in the industry."
John Sharman, CEO of Tuxedo adds: "We are passionate about making payments smarter. Delivering seamless payment solutions is what we do and this solution will change the face of the claims settlement industry. We are proud to be facilitating this change as Independent Group is the first in its industry to offer this solution. "