Using artificial intelligence, Kennedys IQ intends on ‘helping claims handlers shift from information gatherers to insight enabled decision makers’

Kennedys IQ, a platform set up by global law firm Kennedys, has relaunched its end-to-end solution portal claims management solution, called Portal Manager. 

The new enhancement uses artificial intelligence (AI) to assess medical evidence and come up with a damages figure for insurance claims in Ministry of Justice (MoJ). 

It offers a comprehensive solution for claims made through the current claims portal and the new Official Injury Claim (OIC) portal that is due to go live in May for all road traffic accident (RTA) injury claims valued at less than £5,000. 

Portal Manager is one of six components on Kennedy’s IQ was created to help insurance clients self-serve their own legal claims can now assess medical evidence and recommend a damages figure for insurance claims in the MoJ portal.

In addition to this, working in partnership with the University of Manchester’s Decision and Cognitive Sciences Research Centre, the law firm has developed an algorithm to prevent fraudulent claims.

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Kennedys IQ Platform

This means that claims investigators can immediately assess the reasons for a claim being flagged for investigation.

Mike Gilpin, Kennedys IQ’s commercial director, told Insurance Times that, the industry suffers from too much identification, which is where a fraud bot or tool mistakenly identifies fraud. 

“The number of false positives within that can be a huge burden. So, being able to reduce false positives while successfully identifying fraud is what creates effective counter-fraud teams,” Gilpin said.

Product and innovation director Karim Derrick said that the consistency and simplicity are key motives behind the relaunch of the portal, as well as “helping [claims] handlers handle the claims” by driving the law firm’s expertise deeper into the process. “We don’t want [clients] jumping around between multiple systems,” he said. “We want to be able to service them as efficiently as possible and do so from one end of the claim journey all the way through to the end”.

Derrick added: “Portal Manager is the latest stage of our ambitious programme of software development, putting elite legal thinking directly into the hands of client claims handlers via the IQ Platform.”

In most cases where lawyers would traditionally have been instructed, it intends to empower clients through the use of the portal by resolving disputes within in the system.

Commenting on the advantages of combining legal experience and technology, Richard West, partner and head of the innovations group at Kennedys and director of Kennedys IQ, said the solution is designed to “enable [its] clients to be more self-sufficient” as well as “reducing their reliance on lawyers for attritional claims”.

Gilpin continued: “Our aim is to empower our clients with the ability to handle common legal tasks themselves, reducing legal costs and improving efficiency as well as outcomes. The management information the system provides enables compensators to manage their resources with greater accuracy.”

One client reportedly identified a potential for £1m in casualty savings over a 12-month period.

Single solution approach   

According to Kennedys, the system is claims to be the first of its type to help compensators manage RTA injury claims, employers liability and public liability claims from the moment they are submitted via the portal all the way through to a stage three damages hearing at the end and any recoveries, if necessary.

The single solution approach to claims passing through both the old and new portal systems provides users with immediate access to comparative information on claimant behaviour.

Derrick acknowledges that the team needs to be flexible as the use of the system evolves and develops. “We will be there to hold our clients’ hands through that and make sure that we continue to help them get the very best out of the information that is presented,” he said.

Gilpin added: “The OIC portal may appear a significant new challenge for insurers but by having all claims visible in one simple dashboard, irrespective of the source, we expect our clients to manage the transition as seamlessly as possible.”