Meet the Expert

Graham Jackson
Associate Partner - IBM Insurance Consulting Practice

Graham is an Associate Partner within the IBMs Insurance Consulting practice. Prior to joining IBM in 1997, he spent 23 years in insurance in Australia, New Zealand, and UK. He has worked with many of the UK general insurers across a number of engagements in claims and underwriting, and within local and global transformation programmes. Graham's focus in on developing and implementing propositions for the general insurance industry, with a focus on development of claims cost driver models and analytics. Graham is also an Associate of the Institute of Actuaries, having qualified as an actuary in Australia. Graham Jackson recently attended The Insurance Times Claims Clinic as a panellist and explains how firms can exploit technology in the current economic downturn.

Today, do you have a view on claim handler performance at a highly granular level; e.g. average time to settle, average claim settlement, legal fees vs predictable fee on motor injury claims, settlement values vs Glass Retail for motor total losses, supply chain SLAs, and so the list goes on? And the list will change over time; what will be the final requirements for MoJ, what KPI's will be needed to manage within the MoJ environment, what is being done now to prepare for its arrival? As a claims manager, when did you last develop an hypothesis around claims cost drivers and test that hypothesis with relevant data and using an appropriate statistical technique. Or are the truisms of the industry so well known, that they no longer need validation or further development? And while the all-pervasive 'average' affects our daily lives, very seldom does the concept of 'variance' cross our paths, although the increasing number of Lean Sigma initiatives we are engaged in within insurers is changing that. If your responses are more NO than YES, then almost certainly you're the devil without the detail!