From Polaroids to pandemic with AAMC

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It was just over 20 years ago today that AAMC taught the outsourced motor accident management world to play – and though many things are different now, the human element is a constant

IF THERE were a corporate history of AAMC, it might be stored in a grey metal filing cabinet. Filing cabinets dominated the workflow at the specialist accident management services company when it emerged on the scene in 2002, and their shadow still looms large twenty-something years later in the memories of managing director Steve Chapman and strategic relationship manager Daniel Lukich. “We both remember lots and lots of filing cabinets,” says Lukich. “I was using Polaroids at the time, whilst Steve was dropping off his photos at the chemist and picking them up the next day and stapling them to the files.” Not that the filing cabinet was necessarily a tough taskmaster. A typical day for a motor vehicle assessor in the early noughties involved picking up files at an office in the morning before heading out on the road to assess

AAMC is Australia’s largest provider of accident management services to Australian motor insurers. The business provides nationwide motor assessing and accident management capability and supports motor insurers, brokers and corporate fleets to realise cost and quality outcomes within their claims strategies. Over more than 20 years, AAMC has developed technical expertise and capabilities for managing all aspects of motor accident repair regardless of vehicle type. This includes a customer contact centre, a network of partnered repairers and a team of technical experts to mitigate repair costs. AAMC enjoys established relationships with all major insurers and brokers.

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Number of accidents AAMC processes annually

120,000

“That was the catalyst behind [setting up AAMC] – improving or challenging the status quo”

Steve Chapman, AAMC

vehicles – the paperwork accumulated during a run would be dropped back to filing cabinet central the next day. This meant that assessors were practically uncontactable from around 10 am each day – a practice that apparently led to the occasional early-afternoon golf session for some. “There was no online claim lodgement, there were certainly no apps, and call centres were just starting to come into their own – it was still a very manual process,” Lukich explains. Fast-forward two decades and not only are the filing cabinets and golfing escapades gone, but vehicles are radically more complex, there are fewer motor body repairers, and most assessments can be completed the same day instead of in days or weeks. The changes across the sector are all-encompassing. “As technology across all our lives has increased and sped up, so has the insurance claim and the motor repair process,” says Chapman.

The lack of consistency across disparate processes in motor assessing struck Chapman as a problem in search of a solution; it was the inspiration for setting up AAMC to address this industry pain point. At the time, different paperwork was required by different insurance companies, and insurers were outsourcing to multiple and differing suppliers, all of which were providing their own unique reports and methods of adjusting. The tangle

needed translating into a common medium. “I saw an opportunity with web-enabling system software,” Chapman says. “[It] afforded the opportunity to provide consistency and continuity across the country, for assessors to provide consistency in regard to reporting, and methodology which was a game changer for insurers.” Today, the AAMC network provides reports that are clear and consistent regardless of the insurer, the repairer involved or the location. “Whether it's in Western Australia or in Queensland, the claims units in insurance companies will have confidence in receiving consistency,” Chapman says.

It’s a state of mind the company has been able to retain over the years – not an easy thing to do now that AAMC is generally the first name that comes to mind when someone mentions outsourced motor accident management. Many would-be challenger companies find that they start being viewed as the old guard once they have won a reasonable share of the market. “After 20 years, we're still challenging that status quo – so, continually looking to improve, continually looking to develop, we haven't stood still,” Chapman says . Lukich points out that competition in the market won’t let AAMC stand still. “We have to keep demonstrating and asserting our value to the insurers by continual innovation and coming up with better, more efficient, more cost-effective ways of doing what we do,” he says. At first there was resistance from insurers, given that each one had its own preferred way of assessing a motor claim. But gradually, AAMC has been able to whittle away at this stance and convince insurers to let it follow a more efficient path. “The fact that we've got some leverage from credibility and history in the market, knowing that we deliver – the insurers are more accepting [now] that we're doing it our way to achieve the desired outcome,” says Lukich.

“We have to keep demonstrating and asserting our value to the insurers by continual innovation”

Daniel Lukich, AAMC

But despite the advances, Lukich admits that insurance is far behind some other industries, such as banking, when it comes to technology. “Claims tech is still way behind. What the modern consumer is able to transact digitally when claiming on their insurance policy is still quite limited,” he says. He likens the claims process in 2023 to making a bank transfer online, only then to have someone at the bank call

you the next day and manually execute the transaction. “The actual experience of lodging a claim is still very much in the old world and totally at odds with how consumers are choosing to interact with large institutions.” The process for intermediated motor claims is even clunkier than for direct insurance claims, with brokers, customers and companies like AAMC having to wait weeks for a claim to land on their desks due to the linear, multi-touch nature of the process. “[It’s] one slow step at a time and very time-consuming,” Chapman says. “We think there's a huge opportunity with respect to the intermediated claims in motor, and technology is but one component.”

Client and mechanic hands okaying on vehicle repairs, motor claims

A new challenger

Accelerating the pace

Published 24 Apr 2023

What else happened in 2002?

The Euro was officially introduced in the Eurozone countries

Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee was celebrated

Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for work promoting democracy and human rights

Bankrupt airline Ansett Australia formally ceased all operations

Switzerland joined the United Nations

The FIFA World Cup took place in South Korea and Japan

The US Congress approved military action in Iraq if it failed to comply with United Nations requirements for weapons of mass destruction

The Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City, Utah

202 people, including 88 Australian tourists, were killed in a terrorist attack in Bali, Indonesia

Source: Wikipedia

Bringing everything online has cut assessment times down to one or two days, and if there is a surge in claims in one part of the country due to a weather event, for example, then capacity elsewhere in the system can absorb the overflow, avoiding the potential timeline blowouts caused by relying solely on local assessors. “This has massive efficiency dividends for the insurer and also obviously the insured with respect to having motor vehicles repaired quicker,” Chapman says. “That was the catalyst behind [setting up AAMC] – improving or challenging the status quo.”

There have been several catalysts over the years that have helped speed the move to efficiency, consistency and better use of technology – perhaps the major one being the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry. The royal commission shone a spotlight on practices, which the industry is still feeling the ramifications of, and helped bring in the Australian Financial Services Licence for claims, with the knock-on effect of suppliers having to demonstrate compliance. “[The commission] created certain expectations around us as a supplier but also insurers and claims organisations and how they behave,” Chapman says. The impacts of the commission and its findings played out over a period of years, and AAMC used that time to bring in practices it anticipated would result from the inquiry. These included call recording software at its call centre, best practice data security measures, robust reporting frameworks, and even steps to make the business more carbon neutral. This saved the company valuable implementation time when new regulations were formalised. The pandemic was another event that radically accelerated people’s acceptance of technology to solve problems of distance and information deficit.

While grey filing cabinets and Polaroid cameras are now largely museum pieces in the history of motor assessing, the one thing that will always remain the same is the human side of the equation. “[Be it] artificial intelligence, claims tech, automation, bots, digital apps or QR codes, there’s a propensity to think that tech’s going to be the silver bullet to address all issues,” says Lukich. “But as the vehicles we drive get more complicated, many accident claims remain complex, and clients’ expectations for speed and immediate action rise, we’ll still need the human element to support that.” Finding the right people is tough, and AAMC expects the problem to worsen. “Everyone wants their car fixed expertly because they've just invested $60,000 in a family SUV, but do they want their kid working in the panel shop? Probably not,” says Lukich. Assessors need to have a rare combination of expertise in motor body repairs; knowledge of the insurance claims process; and strong people and communication skills. Finding candidates with one of the three isn’t hard, but covering all the bases requires some kind of intervention. For this reason, AAMC is investing in building an assessor training and development academy to ensure its service lines are resourced adequately. “[Trainees] will be learning the craft, and then we can grow our own [talent] and build, plus give something back to the industry,” Chapman says. While the future is difficult to predict, there is no doubt that the cost of claims is now rising exponentially due to inflation, supply chain issues and as motor vehicles become more complex and smarter. “Having adequate people to be able to repair those vehicles with the correct skills, and matching motor vehicles to the correct repairer [with the required skill and technology] to have them repaired will be challenges moving forward,” Chapman says. It’s inevitable that technology will factor into the solutions to tomorrow’s problems in the motor claims process, but customers will certainly remain human with human needs. “Every now and again, they just need to talk to somebody who can help them,” Lukich says. “As technology keeps moving, it's still a people business.”

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