XPRIMM: Van Ameyde has been around in Western Europe for 70 years. What made Van Ameyde decide to expand its operations to CEE and CIS?
Krzysztof JABLONSKI: Van Ameyde's then core business was cross-border motor and bodily injury claims handling under the Green Card and the Fourth EU Motor Directive. As our strategic aim is to cover as many signatory states by own offices, and recognising the growing importance of the region, Van Ameyde was quick to look for reliable partners to join Van Ameyde. Van Ameyde can offer insurance providers in the whole of Europe complete coverage to comply with the regulations.

XPRIMM: Van Ameyde was involved in handling flood claims. A completely different line of business?
K. J.: We are still handling cross-border motor claims, in fact, we are Europe's market leaders, but we soon expanded to property claims. In 2009 and again in subsequent Van Ameyde Polska handled thousands of flood claims and helped stricken homeowners to get back to normal. It's helping people in distress that makes this job so worthwhile! Property claims handling is typically one of the services for the domestic insurance markets.

The reason we can adapt quickly to other lines of business is the incredible IT support. Our own IT company Zero70 has developed a claims management system that can handle any type of claim, anywhere, in any language and in any quantity. So, while claims handlers were inundated with claims in these periods, our IT system, coined ECHO, ensured the smooth and timely handling of the thousands of cases assigned to Van Ameyde.

XPRIMM: Van Ameyde actually develops its own IT solutions, which is unique for a claims management organisation. Could you tell us why Van Ameyde moved into IT solutions?
K. J.: At a very early stage Van Ameyde's Board recognised the need for a central, flexible, international, IT-system. None of the solutions offered by IT providers fit our requirements. After all, we work for hundreds of insurance companies throughout, that all have different service requirements. So Van Ameyde made the bold move to develop the system itself, using SAP for the financial side and Microsoft .Net for the file and claims management processes. No matter what the service levels - which include claim cycle times, the use of preferred supplier networks and authority levels - every claims handler throughout Europe knows exactly what is expected and when, thanks to the activity-driven structure of the processes in ECHO. In addition, reporting from ECHO is completely 'Solvency II proof'.

We didn't stop there. Closely monitoring trends, we detect needs often before insurers - or even fleet and risk managers - realise they have those needs, simply because they are not aware of the possibilities. As a result we have fitted out all the European agents of a major international car hire company with a portal in which they can report all damage to returned cars. The portal, our Incident Management System, is linked to ECHO and in ECHO we triage the cases: if losses are insured they are forwarded to the insurance company in question to deal with the claim. If they are uninsured losses, caused by third parties, Van Ameyde recovers the losses from those third parties. As this wasn't done structurally before, Van Ameyde is saving this car hire company huge amounts in losses.

We don't just develop systems, we also use functionality developed by third parties, that is easy to implement in our own systems, as well as the systems of our customers. This functionality considerably improves the speed of settlement of property claims, using desk-top adjusting functionality. Van Ameyde is the official European distributor of two applications that facilitate one-call completion of household claims, which does not only save costs, but heightens customer satisfaction thanks to the speed of settlement.

It looks like the insurance market in our region is at the verge of some really innovative changes in the way it perceives claims handling. It will be interesting to see whether the market will embrace these innovations. More information about Van Ameyde's services and IT solutions are available on Van Ameyde's website www.vanameyde.com. Thank you Kris for sharing your views on claims management!