Working to resolve your claims more quickly and efficiently

As AIG’s Global Chief Claims Officer, Anthony Vidovich believes the insurance industry has a social mission – which is to provide people and businesses with the confidence they need to take risks and therefore help enable progress.

This means insurers work diligently to support those making big business decisions, whether that be investing in the development of new products or services or doing business around the world.

“Businesses won’t take risks if they believe they could lose their capital because their investments aren’t protected,” says Anthony, who joined AIG in 2018, after a career as an attorney and before that a high school teacher in his hometown of Riverside, NJ.

“The insurance industry plays a critical role in our society and economies because it helps companies both manage risks and transfer them off their balance sheet.”

Anthony sees the big picture: our most important job is to work with our clients to resolve their claims more quickly and efficiently and reach the right outcome.

So, to continually enhance customers’ experiences working with AIG and to drive profitability across the business, Anthony is leading measures to process claims more expeditiously and effectively through the adoption of different technologies that would enable AIG to increasingly digitize and automate a segment of claims that are relatively more routine and less cumbersome to resolve.

AIG Claims is using other technological tools to help grow the business. As part of AIG’s newly -designed myAIG portal, the organization expects to give brokers and clients easier access to key information about their claims, which is currently available through IntelliRisk. By making claims data available on myAIG alongside other pertinent information, AIG is helping brokers and clients be better informed and more empowered to manage risks.

Despite the benefits of technological advances, Anthony doesn’t lose sight of the fact that behind every claim there’s a person or management team dealing with a problem. And he views every claim as a client managing through some of their most vulnerable moments.

“You could have really slick technology, but if it’s cold and unempathetic, it doesn’t meet the customers’ needs,” Anthony says. “The willingness to engage with the broker, to engage with the customer, really does set us apart.” 

Demonstrating AIG’s value to clients and brokers

Because AIG Claims touches clients and customers more than any other area of the organization, Anthony has led his team to also make sure the solutions AIG develops continually meet their evolving needs.

This means having AIG’s claims professionals work more closely with underwriters and actuaries so that those pricing and writing the terms and conditions for AIG insurance policies gain a deeper understanding for how losses are playing out in the market.

If for instance there’s a wave of product liability claims that involve a certain type of technology, then an AIG claims adjuster could share that information with an underwriter tasked with re-evaluating the terms and pricing of certain insurance coverages and policies.

These efforts ultimately benefit brokers and clients. Because the more underwriters and actuaries understand how AIG’s risk solutions are responding to the market in real-time, the less uncertainties brokers and clients face over how the products will work.

“Policies try to address what may happen in a given loss scenario, but the facts of any loss are always quite messy,” Anthony explains. “AIG has dedicated problem solvers who can relate the terms and conditions of the policy’s underwriting intent to the messy world in which the losses occur.”

Further, clients gain more insight into why they’re paying a specific premium and how that’s valuable to them if they experience a loss. Having claims professionals integrate their work with underwriters and actuaries also helps AIG develop risk solutions more tailored to the changing needs of brokers and clients.

“Claims is often where the product really meets the needs of customers,” Anthony says. “The solutions that we’re providing need to work, and it’s where AIG demonstrates its value.”

The human side of insurance is AIG’s people and customers

What sets AIG Claims apart is its people, and their willingness to solve clients’ and brokers’ problems during their time of need. Whether that involves an AIG Accident & Health insurance customer in Chicago dealing with a client having a medical emergency overseas or a CEO in Singapore with a product liability problem, AIG’s global team of claims professionals are on the ground to support a myriad of customers and clients.

“The ability of our people to understand the product, to understand the market and to understand the risk environment are what allows AIG to meet the needs of customers and be able to respond in a prompt, complete and collaborative way.”

Anthony is building on AIG’s risk expertise. He is prioritizing the need for AIG to develop and recruit its talent pool of claims professionals, who like himself, have the skills and awareness to see the bigger role insurance plays in the world.  

“If you want to be able to solve complex problems, and do so in a valuable way, there is no better place to do that than in AIG Claims.”