A butler standing on a yacht pours boiling water from a silver kettle into the cold sea close to his employer who is swimming. The poured water is hot, but merely a drop in the ocean; vast, turbulent, and entirely indifferent to the butler’s small, precise act.
At the recent Gracechurch Claims Social, Sharon Long (Chief Claims Officer) and Tom Paynel (Head of Claims Operations & Performance) of Convex, starting with the ‘butler metaphor’ offered their views on technology and the future of claims.
Sharon contended we have long mistaken the act of “pouring” for the act of caring. We have been too focused on the mechanics of the process, convinced that precision in execution equals excellence in service. As we stand on the brink of a tech revolution, AI is already proving it can “pour” faster than most humans, automating straightforward transactions with ease, but the risk is that it remains disconnected from the “lived reality” of the client. What is valuable the ability to understand what the water feels like, that is empathy,
For years, as Gracechurch data has shown, claims excellence has meant speed and process discipline, but as AI takes on triage, summarisation, reserving support and straight-through processing, speed will rapidly become table stakes, resulting in a fundamental shift.
Tom said it was time to reframe the opportunity, the goal should be about the “convergence of AI and Empathy” and being intentional in how we design for it. Integrating and scaling AI across the claims lifecycle to manage data capture, pattern recognition and prediction, leaving human adjusters to focus on judgement, complexity and client-focused solutions.
The vision is that of a “wisdom hierarchy”, where AI gets us from data to knowledge quickly. But wisdom, understanding what truly matters in the lived reality of a client, depends on scaling human EQ with AI, with empathy touching more “surface area” of the business by not losing time on gathering basic knowledge.
As AI becomes the norm, Tom also highlighted that the challenge will be ensuring “foundational readiness”, we need to take time as a market to ensure our systems, architecture and data is ready to scale. Spending time on foundational readiness now will determine how quickly we can move when the technology is ready.
As the London Market considers its collective future, Sharon suggests shifting perspective to the view that “Empathy isn’t a soft skill in claims, it’s a hard advantage” and recognising that we need to heighten the relevance of AI literacy for Claims professionals.
As Tom concluded:
“The future of claims is the convergence of EQ & AI, on a scale where client service has more of an impact because of the insights and knowledge AI provides.”
Thank you to Sharon and Tom for an excellent and thought-provoking talk which was both optimistic and challenging.