LONDON, January 26, 2022 — WTW and Thatcham Research have announced a new partnership that combines their market-leading data and analytical capabilities to deliver a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of increasingly advanced vehicle technologies on claims risk.
Vehicle technology is experiencing a seismic transformation, with even mass market family hatchbacks featuring Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), expensive headlights, and keyless and connectivity systems. This is in addition to the substantial rise in sales of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. This pace of change adds new complexity for insurers, putting them under pressure to achieve a more sophisticated picture of claims data relating to the many varying features of new vehicle models.
Claims leaders, underwriters, pricing teams, reserving actuaries and senior management need to understand the extent to which these novel risk factors are driving new claims trends. For example, which vehicle features represent the highest claims risk, higher inflationary costs, or actual savings, such as from reduced injury frequency and severity.
Containing data for over 50,000 vehicle variants, the unique Thatcham Research dataset Variant Code provides data granularity on the growing variety of standard and optional features in UK vehicles. WTW’s Claim Metrics platform provides deep analysis of claims activity in the personal lines insurance market, benchmarking over £17 billion of motor claims spend and more than 40% of the UK motor market. The tie-up will see Variant Code’s vehicle specificity combine with Claim Metrics’ data and analytics to give insurers far deeper, richer insights of emerging trends in claims risks at a granular level in terms of claims characteristics, geography and vehicle type.
Tom Helm, Head of Claims Consulting, WTW, said: “We are excited to announce this new partnership, which delivers a powerful combination of two unique datasets, supported by market-leading analytics, that offers insurers exceptional levels of insight into emerging claims trends driven by changes in vehicle technology and, as a consequence, the opportunity to benchmark claims performance at a more precise and granular level.”
“We are excited to announce this new partnership, which offers insurers exceptional levels of insight into emerging claims trends driven by changes in vehicle technology.”
Tom Helm | Head of Claims Consulting, WTW
Daniel Payne, Chief Digital Officer, Thatcham Research, said: “Vehicles are set to change more in the next five years than they have in the last 50. Combining the uniquely granular data and sophisticated analytics capabilities of Variant Code and Claim Metrics is a win-win for insurers. Empowered by new levels of insight, claims, underwriting and pricing teams are able to make more informed decisions, and price according to the specific features of a particular model variant. This capability is fundamental to maintaining competitive advantage, as vehicles evolve and technologies that were once the preserve of high-end models increasingly become available at entry level.”
Thatcham Research, established by the motor insurance industry in 1969 with the specific aim of containing or reducing the cost of motor insurance claims while maintaining safety standards, has been delivering vehicle risk data on behalf of its members and the Association of British Insurers (ABI) for two decades.
Thatcham Research is the independent voice of automotive safety, security & repair, advising motorists, insurers and vehicle manufacturers to help reduce accident frequency, severity and costs and to realise the vision of ‘Safer cars, fewer crashes’, while driving standards in vehicle security.
As well as its world leading crash and track research, Thatcham Research develops repair methods amongst a number of other data-rich products and services within the collision repair industry for insurers, motor manufacturers, equipment manufacturers and suppliers.
Claim Metrics provides claims benchmarking and market trend analysis for UK Motor insurers. Analysing over seven million claims every six months, the service enables insurers to compare their performance to peers across a vast range of metrics. Its business intelligence platform provides self-service benchmarking via Software as a Service (SaaS) technology. This places visualisations in the insurers experts’ hands, with highly dynamic functionality empowering users to make rapid, data-driven decisions.
Delivered by WTW’s Insurance Consulting and Technology team, Claim Metrics provides claims, pricing and underwriting teams with the ability to understand their claims performance with greater accuracy in different sectors, and how variations in portfolio, business model or claims handling lead to particular outcomes. It gives them invaluable insight into future claims inflation and the opportunity to deliver a more competitive business plan.
WTW’s Insurance Consulting and Technology business has over 1,200 colleagues operating in 35 markets worldwide. It is a leading provider of advice, solutions and software – primarily to the insurance industry. Its consulting services help clients manage risk and capital, improve business performance and create competitive advantage – by focusing on financial and regulatory reporting, enterprise risk and capital management, M&A and corporate restructuring, products, pricing, business management and strategy.
At WTW (NASDAQ: WTW), we provide data-driven, insight-led solutions in the areas of people, risk and capital. Leveraging the global view and local expertise of our colleagues serving 140 countries and markets, we help organisations sharpen their strategy, enhance organisational resilience, motivate their workforce and maximise performance.
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