WARNING: This paper contains opinions that may shock, annoy, dismay and generally offend valuation actuaries! With this headline warning we did not deliberately set out to cast aspersions on the science of setting disability life reserves nor the professionals that are charged with this responsibility. Who are we with only our claims management expertise to encroach […]

How do we build a better mousetrap in claims? In this case, I am referring to your claims data strategy as the mousetrap and the need for better, smarter tools in your claims process. In the current climate, there has never been more important time to develop and execute a well-considered strategy. The reasons are many. […]

Everyone at The Claim Lab would like to wish you and your family the very best for the Holidays! It’s been quite a year and perhaps the excitement is not over yet… I hope you enjoy our meditating Santa picture. Maybe this is something that we should all try right now, as we ease into another uncertain […]

Last week, the Wall Street Journal suggested that “4.3 Million Workers are Missing…. Where have they gone?” in an article by Josh Mitchell et al., (click here to review) and provided examples and analysis on the effect across all of industry. Insurance companies have not escaped and claims operations are getting hammered, at a time when claim […]

COVID, long COVID, anxiety, depression… whatever the reason, claim volumes are up. In this situation we have to modify our procedures to increase productivity. Reliable claim segmentation is a key part of this process.We need to work smarter! We must have the courage to not manage certain claims. Yes, that’s right! We don’t allocate certain claims to case […]

Sometimes there is no big ‘Ah-Ha’ moment in our projects. More often there is a gradual realization of patterns emerging in the data. A correlation that is rather unexpected and as the data accumulates, the patterns in the data become clearer, and of course the reverse is true too, when an expected dependency is disproven. […]

Sleep is a really interesting topic, one which we stumbled into. Three years ago, we started collecting sleep data as part of our Psychosocial Questionnaires. We quickly saw that there was a huge correlation between lack of sleep and poor mental wellbeing. The inability to sleep is actually one of the determinant symptoms of major […]

Many of you know of our focus on the psychosocial influencers for return to work, and how we have invested in tools to collect this information to gain a greater understanding on the influencers on a claim. Well for this month we would like to give our platform to Dr Claire Muselman, an industry leader […]

As some of you may know, we are closely involved with the Council for Disability Awareness. This is a non-profit that does much in the US to promote disability insurance amongst consumers.   Last year, my CDA colleagues Dr Fraser Gaspar and Fred Schott were co-authors of a research paper, along with Daniel Jolivet, Kerri Wizner, […]

Early Detection of Mental Health Issues A Canadian-based employee assistance plan provider, Morneau Shepell, conducted a study in 2017 in partnership with The Globe and Mail to better understand the one in five residents who experience a mental health problem or illness within a given year. The results indicated that 72 percent of surveyed employees who reported mental health […]