The U.S. P&C industry has significantly lagged behind other U.S. and global industries in reducing unit costs over the last 15 years, and spending on managing claims litigation or contingent liabilities is a major reason. Most large P&C carriers spend 5% to 8% of gross written premium under various categories like external counsel, expert fees and internal attorney costs. This spending is considered a necessary evil so carriers can manage the right settlement or trial outcomes as well as protect their reputation. However, our experience with some of the largest U.S. P&C carriers demonstrates that there is a general lack of strategic insight in managing this large spending bucket and consequently a missed opportunity to reduce expenses.
Social inflation is an accelerating trend in the last decade, and COVID-19-related litigation is likely to complicate the situation for commercial insurers significantly. The systematic increase in litigation funding and rising wealth inequalities have added significant fuel. Many CEOs have publicly raised social inflation as a continuous challenge to profitability.
Sudden economic changes brought by the pandemic have created both risks and opportunities for P&C carriers. On the one hand, extended closure of courts and delays in litigation are likely to drive more plaintiffs to look for faster settlements. On the other hand, there is a high degree of uncertainty because of potential legislation regarding coverage exclusions in business interruption policies. Carriers need to respond to events as they occur, state by state, with great agility, empathy and data-based objectivity.
It is important for insurance carriers to have a robust litigation management strategy. We have identified five key levers in managing litigation spending:
1. Being Data-Driven
Having a data-driven claims team is the first prerequisite for leveraging the power of analytics for litigation. Exploration of claims, litigation and financial data leads to surfacing the need for advanced analytics intervention. Extraction and processing of external court data is challenging and often expensive, but a few carriers have seen tremendous return on such investment.
2. Well-Defined Metrics
Most carriers struggle with a homogenous and widely accepted (internally) definition of litigation spending and its categories. Claims, finance, general counsel, internal trial division, procurement, legal ops – are all the departments that have slightly different ideas of what actually is a dollar spent on litigation, and consequently what and how that expense can be reduced. As a start, a strategic initiative to harmonize the definition and reconcile the differences in metrics (as they flow through multiple databases and reports) should be launched. Such an initiative has very high return on investment as it tends to bring into focus the opportunity for the carrier.
3. Advanced Analytics Capabilities
A few carriers are building models to predict litigation propensity or even to predict outcome based on use of staff versus outside counsel. In addition to data science and analytics model deployment experience, prioritization of the advanced analytics resources toward litigation spending management is a key requirement.
See also: P&C Commercial Lines in 2021
4. Data Infrastructure
Quality and freshness of data flowing into the descriptive and predictive analytics workflows is a key determinant of the value of litigation analytics. Poorly built and broken data pipelines may cause delayed and incorrect execution of the analytical models and may not yield insights to act upon in spite of successful validation of early models. A robust data management strategy is important to ensure collection, cleansing and preparation of critical data elements for analytics execution.
5. Attitudes and Behavior
Perhaps the most important factor holding back P&C carriers is a lack of the right attitudes and behaviors. An economically optimal view needs to be developed for leadership to take an informed decision in every litigated claim (sue or settle) or even potential litigation. Serious adoption of insights by operational staff is usually the last and most critical point toward data-driven success. In our experience, a strategic approach to litigation management requires mixing experienced litigation adjusters skills with data science, engineering and process design experts.
Conclusion
There are no silver bullets in systematically reducing litigation spending. In our experience, the carriers using most, if not all, of the principles discussed here are way ahead. Their desire to manage litigation spending better made them methodical and data-driven. We can say with almost certainty that, as the situation with COVID-19 accelerates, changes in claims litigation combined with the effects of social inflation mean that these carriers are better prepared to face the future.
