Company

Located just 90 minutes Northeast of Toronto, the City of Kawartha Lakes is an Ontario municipality that is home to more than 75,000 permanent residents, and 30,000 seasonal residents. Nearly 1.4 million people pay visits to Kawartha Lakes each year, seeking out the cottage lifestyle made possible by 250 different lakes and rivers. Their vibrant communities draw in visitors seeking both an abundance of green spaces and fresh air, in addition to vibrant downtown areas providing access to shopping, dining, and entertainment. 

Challenges

The hard insurance market is causing increasing premium costs, and pressure by insurers to manage risk internally.

Solution

ClearRisk's Risk Management Information System and Online Claim Submission Web Portal.

Challenges

Jolene Ramsay has been the sole Insurance and Risk Management Officer at Kawartha Lakes since 2009. Her role involves dealing with everything insurance-wise related to their buildings, vehicles, operations, and liability related issues. Jolene is directly responsible for handling any insurance claims that come through to the City, and dealing with any litigation that may result.

When she first started she knew every claim that they had. She could pick up a file and know exactly where she left off, but as time went by she realized that there was just too much going on. There was no way they could keep track of it all without having a system in place. Kawartha Lakes briefly adopted a system from a neighbouring Ontario municipality to help them manage all their claims information, but they were reluctant to store critical data inside a system that wasn't theirs. They became slowly more concerned about continuing with this borrowed system.

At present, the biggest challenge facing Jolene and others in her municipality network is the insurance hard market, forcing them to deal with increasing premium costs and competitiveness during insurance renewals. Municipalities have an overwhelming need to develop and refine in-house risk management programs and strategies to combat increasing premiums. The City of Kawartha Lakes has been forced by the hard market to increase its SIR (selfinsured retention) by 10x since Jolene started in this role. Increasing SIRs helps combat rising insurance premium costs, though this also increases the risk being managed by the City. This results in more claims that have to be managed internally, and a greater burden on risk management departments.

Solution

ClearRisk’s robust cloud-based claims and risk management solution allows the City to manage, store, and update all of their claims data inside one, centralized system. ClearRisk worked side-by-side with the City to migrate their current environment including uploads of all historical data such as claims and incidents, policies, assets, and contacts. Jolene is now able to use ClearRisk reports and present data coherently to her insurers, internal management, and for any litigation she might be dealing with for the City. ClearRisk’s task functionality also helps the City stay on track and updated no matter how much might be going on.

By implementing ClearRisk, Jolene and the City found a solution to their hard market woes. Going into Kawartha Lakes’ insurance renewal, ClearRisk plays a major role by allowing for visibility. ClearRisk's solution helps the City to tell a story around its data and have intelligent conversations with their insurance partners and consultants where they can accurately speak about their risk. The system puts Kawartha Lakes in a good position to take on a higher SIR, lessening the burden of increasing insurance costs.

With an increased SIR, the risk department is responsible for managing an increased volume and frequency of claims/incidents in-house. ClearRisk’s solution makes it possible to create an internal risk-program by storing historical data, and reporting on incoming claims. This gives insurers confidence that the City has risk management in place, and is able to manage their claims already within their previous SIR.

Moving forward the insurance market is only going to continue hardening, with the economic impact of COVID-19 causing carriers to be increasingly cautious. Insurers now ask for 10 years in claims history, with requirements getting stricter and more specific every year. ClearRisk gives the City the ability to stay on track with their claims, recording costs, reserves, and any other relevant information so they can confidently present their data when the time comes.

When the pandemic hit and people had to work from home, ClearRisk played a pivotal role in allowing the City to switch from mostly paper files to a digital process. What really helped this transition was when Kawartha Lakes implemented ClearRisk’s Online Web Portal for Claims Submission. It allows the City to direct claimants and residents to the electronic web portal link when City administration offices have been closed for an extended period of time, and during early restrictions on accepting physical documents and records. Transitioning to the web-portal allows Jolene to streamline data collection from external parties, while improving the experience for claimants and residents, and digitizing internal administration processes.

Before the web-portal, it often took upwards of 30-45 minutes to open a new claim in the system and create a physical file. Moreover, Jolene manually drafted confirmation emails to claimants and transcribed paper notes, which is time consuming for a one person department. However, now the process is shortened to minutes, and information is automatically populated directly inside ClearRisk. Adopting a digital format eliminates manual note-taking by providing a quick snapshot of claim details and their current status. In addition, ClearRisk notifications tell the risk manager when a record has been added or changed, and sends a confirmation email to the claimant acknowledging the receipt of their submission. Claim reports and attachments are now easily downloaded and sent to the adjuster for handling. Jolene is very excited for all the new features coming her way, allowing her to manage risk at the city on a whole new level!

Results

• 86%: reduction in time spent on manual claims processing.
• 93%: reduction in risk department paper usage.
• Increased confidence from insurers enabling a 1000% increase in SIRs to allow the City to combat the hard market by raising retention levels, taking on more risk, and thereby reducing insurance premium costs.
• Reporting and insights causing improved management visibility and decision making.
• Reported reductions in claims and legal defence costs.
• Implementation of a sidewalk inspection program causing reduced frequency of slips, trips, and falls.