Consistency, technology, and the human touch behind a 5-star claims experience

There's usually somebody in a foreign hospital asking you for your credit card to pay a massive bill. You're in a place you don't know and you really need a company that will support you. Hello everyone, welcome to Insurance Business TV as we catch up with Kyle Sparkman of Allianz Global Assistance Canada on the back of another award win. Kyle, welcome back to Insurance Business TV. Hey Paul, great to be back. Thanks for having me. So Kyle, you're going great guns at Allianz Global Assistance Canada. You've now been named as a five-star claims provider. So what do you believe are the key factors behind delivering a claims experience that consistently earns high marks from brokers and from customers? Yeah, thanks Paul. And we're super proud of the five-star claims provider award. Claims has been something that I've personally been working on with Allianz since I joined seven or eight years ago when I was COO. And it's been very important for us as a company to make sure that claims are clear, easy to understand when there is confusion, when there's changes or differences that the customer understands what's happening. So it's been a journey. We continue to believe it's an ongoing journey with our main focus being that claims need to be fast, easy, clear and they need to be there when customers need us most. And with the travel insurance product, that's often quite frequently when people are making a claim. Our tools are intuitive. We've been working on our products to make sure that the language is simple, that people can understand what their coverages are. It kind of even starts way up there when you're creating the product. You want the wordings to be understandable. You don't want there to be open for interpretation components to that. And it's something where our brokers, travel agents and different partners really play a key role at making sure that customers understand what's included in their claims. So when it ultimately gets to a claim, there's not unexpected surprises. Our fully digital and integrated claims portal has really been built in a way to make sure that the right documents are being received by the customer. We used to have a problem where the customer was not clear on what they would send to us. So we're really trying to make it easy for people to be successful the first time. And this recognition is a good evidence that we've done an okay job at that. So we're pretty proud of it. And we continue to look for improvements that we could make. Quite a timely award as well, isn't it, Kyle? Because obviously there's just been so much happening in the market. We've seen travel disruptions, medical inflation, geopolitical events. They've all created new challenges for travellers. So how have claims patterns changed over the past few years in general? And what adjustments have you made to ensure that customers continue to receive that timely support that they really need? Yeah, Paul, I'll add to that. Weather. Weather is a new phenomenon that's increasingly becoming something that really is affecting travel and travel flows. And potentially another thing to think about is in Canada, we have Canada's Air Passenger Protection Regulation or the Passenger Bill of Rights, which is confusing for airlines, confusing for customers. So we often find customers a little bit out of sorts when delays happen or interruptions happen, or they miss a connection or a cruise because of something that happened up in their trip. In addition to those things, as you mentioned, geopolitical issues, different airlines are diverting and going to different locations, rising medical costs, global uncertainty just in general is really making customers evaluate what they need in terms of those protections that they have. So having clean protection, having clean products and services is important. I'd like to really highlight one of the advantages of Allianz. So Allianz, at Allianz, we're one of the few providers that does everything from beginning to end in a travel insurance environment. We don't have a partner doing our claims administration. We don't have a partner doing our administration. It's all staff that ultimately report to me. And when we have that, I can actually start those claim processes at the first call, even at the sales call, where I can help people to understand their coverages. So Allianz is slightly different in how we do things, and I think that is a testament to our company and to the services that people receive. I do think that all of these different claims reasons are creating needs where we are informing people up front, where we are having good conversations and keeping those lines of communication open. We've done a lot to segment our claims as well. So there are simpler claims that are pretty obvious when things happen, and we'd like to, well, I'm not going to say completely automate, we'd like to speed up the processes under which we can get back to customers for those simpler ones. And then when you get to more complex cases, some of those big medical claims that people will have, there's really a triple financial stress. You're in a place you don't know when you really need a company that will support you. And our segmented approach and our assistants and case managers, all the way through to our claims managers, are really doing their best to keep customers informed. If we're speaking to customers, not sending an email, not sending a letter by mail, we're talking to customers when we see things that we need clarification. So we're doing a lot of work to make sure that the different events that are happening are really well understood from a coverage perspective, from a clarity perspective, and from a customer's perspective. So we're quite proud of that. Add to that the Allianz Global Network. So Allianz Partners is in 40 plus countries with business units doing this service, and we connect with them where our travelers are. So we're able to hold somebody's hand through an emergency all the way through to the claim, and then make sure that when hospitals or providers might be sending them bills or different requests for information, we're guiding them and we're holding them through those events. So super proud of that, and we're going to continue to make sure that with all of these differences that we're seeing in travel insurance claims, that we're really on top of all of those changes. You mentioned at the start there about some of the difficult situations that people can find themselves in. Travel insurance claims, of course, often involve people in stressful situations far from home. So how do you balance technology and automation with the human touch that customers presumably still need during these emergencies? Yeah, absolutely. I think one of our foundations, and we have a core ideology within our internal company where all of the employees believe a statement that basically is that we're there to care and help. The concept of caring for a customer during this very necessary or unnecessary potentially time in their travel journey when they're having an unexpected event is really what sets our people apart. I think that's the personal value that our employees get from working in this space. I did mention the stressful situations that people have, but if you think about it, I always say somebody in a complex medical event, there's usually somebody in a foreign hospital asking you for your credit card to pay a massive bill, so you have a financial stress. You have a medical stress where you or your loved one is going through something in an uncertain environment. And then that third one is that uncertain environment. The medical systems that you get in different places where travelers are going is very different than what they might expect at home. Canadians often show up with a government health card or a provincial health card and they're welcomed in and they get to have services done. So making sure that we're in the palm of somebody's hand is really important. So whether that is by phone, through our claims portal, and coming up we're going to be introducing an app that is much more integrated in terms of bringing the claims portal with you when you're traveling. Doing things like that will allow us to be there with the customer so that they're not feeling unprepared and unconnected. Our personal care is always paramount to the technology that we're enabling, so every digital advancement that we're making is meant to be on top of that personal experience. It's meant to make it easier and more simple and that's always going to be our main focus. We hear a lot about AI and automated decisions and interactions. Anytime we can become more efficient to spend more time with the customers where they need us, I'm happy to do those things. But it can't replace that personal touch, that human connection. It can't emplace our employees who are talking to the people and guiding them through that as experts because that's what they need. They need that helpful voice on the other end of the phone that's there to help them guide through these emergencies. So it will always be a balance. Mitigating the stress, making us more efficient and moving on from the actual event to the post-claim event are the things that we're most focused on. Speaking of making sure that travelers are better prepared, brokers of course play an important role in setting expectations and supporting clients before the loss occurs. What would you say that brokers can do to help travelers perhaps better understand their coverage and indeed improve outcomes when those claims do arise? I think a well-informed traveler is the most important thing. It's far too frequent that a customer will buy a package or buy a policy and get it by email and not actually dig into the guts of the policy. That's really what the meaningful parts of the policy are so that they're aware of what the coverage is, they're aware of what the limits are. Often in other channels, other than our broker channel, you find uninformed customers who haven't taken the time to read that. So I will celebrate our broker partners and our broker community because they empirically and through our data do the best job at making sure that the customer is buying the right product for themselves for the specific situation that they're going in. Right product, right customer is the first thing that I would say. Secondly, making sure that the inclusion of what coverages they have are the right ones and understanding what that means in terms of documents, limits, all of the different things that you would get in insurance. In our data, we see that customers give us the right claim more frequently from a broker than any other channel. They know what they need to provide, they've talked to their broker, they've been advised by their partner. In fact, our pay rates and our denial rates are very different in our broker channel because the customer is giving us the right thing the first time. So you don't get those soft denials where somebody hasn't given us the right documents. You get denials for coverage when it's supposed to be denied, but you get payments much more frequently and much more quickly. So I'd advocate that the broker continues to make sure that the customer is aware of coverages, is aware of the needs for coverages, but is also being guided by the tools that we provide brokers to help them inform the customer so that the customer knows what they're walking out of the country with. So positioning travel insurance as a part of the risk management discussion really helps to strengthen that relationship and that advice and that trusted advisor status that a broker has with the customer really brings that collaboration between us and our broker to the customer so that the customer gets the best product and the best service when they need to use that product in the market. Let's help our brokers be better prepared as well, if you don't mind. Let's just look ahead. What emerging risks or customer expectations perhaps do you believe will have the greatest impact on travel insurance claims? And indeed, how are you guys at Allianz Global Assistance Canada? How are you preparing for the future? Yeah, I think we've spoken about some of the external factors. So I still think every busy winter travel season that we have, we look for what is going to be the different event that's going to happen. So I would expect there to be continued climate-related disruptions, geopolitical changes. We're still waiting for the Canadians' view of traveling to the U.S. to either go back to the way it was or to normalize a little bit, and we haven't really seen that if I'm being honest. So watching those trends on what customers are doing is really important, and it might actually create different products. It's already creating different air routes for airlines as an example. So people are going to different places. So watching those things happen is important. That brings us always back to medical inflation. The cost of medical outside of Canada continues to rise, continues to change. We used to always speak about the U.S. being a very cost-prohibitive location for Canadian travelers, and they needed to have travel insurance. But we're seeing that all over the world now because of just the complexity of medical. So medical inflation is going up, and myself and I know my competitors are all seeing that. So pricing changes in the products are something that people need to be aware of, and we're watching that to make sure that we're managing the right risks. Customers are always going to expect simpler, easier to interact with products and services, and this is why our digital app that is going to be coming out is going to get coverage in the palm of your hands. You're going to have clarity. You're not going to have to look for an email or a piece of paper with all of your coverages. It's going to be in the palm of your hands. So we're really trying to enable digital capabilities that integrate the customer with their product, with our different platforms, like our claims platform, like our air doctor or telemedicine platforms, to make sure that we're getting the right thing to the customer at the right time. I'd be remiss, everybody is talking about AI and agentic AI these days, and figuring out how that, again, can reinforce our human experience versus replace our human experience is something that us at Allianz globally are really looking to reinforce. We find the simpler tasks can be simplified and sped up so that, again, we can have those interpersonal conversations when customers need us the most. So we remain committed to strong human support during all travel emergencies, whether it's medical or non-medical, and we want to deliver unique, simple, and responsive experiences for our customers when they need us the most. So that's where we are looking to invest. It's a balance, and we're looking to balance the changing environments with the changing capabilities with better products and services that help customers. Well, obviously, a balance that you're striking very well at the moment. Kyle, huge thanks for joining us today, and congratulations again to Allianz Global Assistance Canada on being named among this year's five-star claims providers. And thanks, too, of course, to you for watching. We'll see you next time right here on Insurance Business TV.