Insurance Claims Processing Software

Introduction

Alex Frazier: Hey everybody, welcome back to The Orange Chair Podcast!

Today, we have Loden Cullar-Ledford in the orange chair, giving us a complete overview of the Livegenic virtual collaboration platform.

To kick things off Loden, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Loden Cullar-Ledford (51s): Sure. Thanks so much, Alex. My name is Loden Cullar-Ledford. I am the VP of Customer Success at Livegenic and I’ve been here since 2016.

Some background on what that position is, I basically work at the intersection of sales, marketing, customer experience, and a little bit of product design as well. So on a day to day basis, what I’m doing is working with our clients and our partners.

That can be everything from designing workflows or training or onboarding staff. I work with our customer success and client services teams to do direct ongoing client support.

I do also work in a sales engineering role. So I might be helping set up a workflow for a new client or a new partner of ours. And then I also work with our developers in a kind of high level capacity for designing new features. This is based on feedback that I get from our clients and partners.

Alex Frazier (1m 46s): Great. Can you give us a fun fact about yourself?

Loden Cullar-Ledford (1m 49s): Sure. I was actually born in England, but I grew up in Texas and my whole family is from Texas. So I’m just a bit of an odd ball, but that always seems to surprise folks, I think.

Alex Frazier (2m 4s): Wow. That’s awesome. Well, great. I would love to just jump on into this podcast. So first, can you give me an overview of the Livegenic platform and its functionality?

What is Livegenic for Insurance?

Loden Cullar-Ledford (2m 15s): Sure. So what Livegenic is.,at the highest level, is a virtual claims collaboration platform.

What that really means is we provide a suite of solutions of mobile tools and browser solutions to insurance carriers or other organizations in the insurance space.

These solutions allow organizations to virtually inspect and collaborate with policy holders, field adjusters and field inspectors.  With this software, they can share document content for claims, underwriting loss control, or really pretty much any scenario that involves collecting content from a specific location. For insurance, it is primarily focused on the claims side.

We do have a heavy emphasis as in underwriting and loss control for all sorts of different purposes. In general, what makes Livegenic unique that we offer a variety of different tools. We can really custom build the workflows. The way that we work with our clients is to really fit their specific needs.

Livegenic Insurance Use Cases

Loden Cullar-Ledford (3m 29s): As an example, we have a solution specifically for customers or policy holders. Then, we have a totally separate tool or solution for adjusters and field estimators and essentially insurance professionals who are going on site themselves to do a physical inspection.

The needs that those two different types of people are going to have are going to be completely different.

Customers want something easy, quick and straightforward.

Whereas a field professional is going to want something that is comprehensive and supports them in different ways. Something that  makes their jobs easier.

So we don’t want to fit a square peg in a round hole. We want to give solutions that are built specifically for the use cases that our clients need, regardless of which tool is being used or who is using it.

All of the information that’s getting collected can be recorded during a live environment, say for a remote virtual inspection to help a policyholder .It could help them do an inspection at the first notice of loss instead of waiting potentially days for a physical inspection.

Or it could allow the adjuster to self-inspect while they’re doing an onsite loss estimation. It could enable them to have all of the content, photos, videos and other recordings seamlessly and immediately saved back to the Livegenic platform.

So there’s a lot less management of data. There’s a lot less time spent uploading photos by hand or managing file uploads and things like that.

In general, all of the information that is collected through Livegenic is securely stored and accessible through the Livegenic platform. So adjusters or estimators (and other approved parties) are able to get in and actually review that content quickly and really easily. I hope that is a good overview there.

Remote Claims Inspection Applications

Alex Frazier (5m 1s): Yeah, that was great. I do understand that you guys have a couple of different apps and a web browser app. Can you speak to the mobile capabilities of Livegenic and how would that help a claims or inspection field worker?

Loden Cullar-Ledford (5m 19s): For sure. Something that we really like to emphasize with our mobile tools is that we really want to make sure that each and every one of them, regardless of what it was originally built for, is able to support any environment at any time. This is regardless of things like connectivity or your time of day.

As an example, all three of the Livegenic kind of flagship mobile solutions can do a guided live video stream, which is for the customer or the adjuster.

Whoever was actually onsite doing a video recording, someone else can review that live video and talk to them. They can guide them through that live inspection.

Our tools can all also do offline recording, whether that is photo-based or video-based. We can also have anyone upload attachments or other documents that they already have on their device. Again, this does apply to all three of our flagships solutions. So what that really means is that there is never a time when a customer isn’t able to document their inspection on their own time.

Remote Inspections, With or Without Connectivity

They don’t have to wait for an adjuster to be on the phone with them. Or for a really strong internet connection. There is no need to work around the schedule of their provider or their carrier. They are able to work fully on their own time if they prefer to do so. 

That’s really important for us, especially when it comes to the professional inspection side. These field appraisers and independent adjusters know what they’re doing.

They don’t need to have a live connection or a live interaction with someone else. They would like to just get on site, do their work, record the content, and be done with it. They can do so in an offline environment, even if they’re, you know, they’re way out in the boonies, somewhere with no connection, they can still use Livegenic to record and document that loss.

Then, all they have to do to get the content from their device synced and available on the Livegenic platform is just turn on the device once it’s connected to the internet.  Everything that they record will synchronize immediately. So it’s just a lot simpler for them.

It takes a ton of their time that they would normally be spending trying to manage that information, and really just gives it back to them since it all happens seamlessly.

Alex Frazier (7m 35s): Gotcha. So I know that you guys have two different kinds of apps. There’s the my claim app and the enterprise app. What would one person choose over the other? What would be that clarifying or determining factor that somebody would want to use the enterprise app over the my claim app?

Loden Cullar-Ledford (7m 53s): Sure. So my claim is designed specifically or primarily for use by customers and insurance. You can kind of think of it almost like single use.

Whereas, our enterprise app is really specifically meant for field professionals, like adjusters or contractors, who are going on site to work on their own time.

Now there is a third tool that you had mentioned earlier that I also want to touch on that what we call the Livegenic customer portal. This is similar to my claim in that it is built specifically for use by policy holders and insureds, but it is fully browser-based. So there is actually no download required. There is no app store needed. No passwords or check-ins the way the customer accesses it.

The customer portal is used via the link that we can send to them, either like a text message or through an email link.It just pops through the browser on their device and they can immediately jump in and start using it.

For instance, when I’m doing training with new adjusters who we are onboarding, I might focus on the different benefits provided by either the customer portal or the my claim app. It is going to come down to what the adjuster’s feeling is about that particular policy holder or the last item that they were working on. We give them the ability to choose on a reactive basis, whatever tool is going to make the most sense for them.

Alex Frazier (9m 17s): That’s good. I know that Livegenic at its core, is a virtual collaboration tool. So what other industries, besides insurance, would see a benefit from using this? How could it be used in other industries?

Loden Cullar-Ledford (9m 34s): In general, the actual way that these tools are used is going to be fairly similar to the way we have it set up for insurance.

What would I tell people for instance, when we’re at trade shows? We get this question a lot. You’d use Livegenic anytime you have a scenario or a workflow that involves the the need to remotely inspect or collaborate on some form of inspection. Whether that is virtual collaboration for government, manufacturing or higher education, or even tech support.

Personally, when I was in college, I actually worked at my college’s tech support team. I did a lot of direct support calls. You know, we actually have clients today who are on the government side and they might work as like a warranty corporation, helping homeowners in their state or in their province to virtually inspect. They get an understanding of what people might need for a specific types of government support programs. 

Building Inspection Software

Loden Cullar-Ledford: In private sector industries, for example, some residential spaces need to be inspected every so often. So let’s say you have an apartment complex with 300 different apartments in it. Every quarter you need to make sure the fire extinguishers are up to date and that the fire alarms are turned on. Maybe there are a handful of other checks that need to be done. In person, that is going to take a long time. Because now you’re coordinating schedules with people and you’ve got to have the key to every room.

With Livegenic, you could have a quick virtual inspection, either in a real environment where you have a a live connection or even just ask each tenant to take a quick picture of their fire extinguisher.

It’s really gonna come down to the use case. We have a variety of clients outside of insurance. Again, the platform can be used is fairly similar regardless of where or why the inspection has been conducted. Virtual collaboration and remote inspection tools have a lot of use cases in a lot of different places.

Alex Frazier (11m 59s): Yeah. I agree. So why is this tool important now? What have you seen within, the last couple of months or years that has really been a big factor in why we need virtual collaboration?

Loden Cullar-Ledford (12m 14s): I think it has actually been a fairly rapid shift.

One of the biggest changes in the insurance space is actually on the policy holder side, as people have gotten more comfortable with technology. The perceptions and expectations about what services we expect as a paying customer have changed. I think that’s one of the biggest drivers of why virtual collaboration is so important nowadays. 

Even four years ago, there was a smaller comfort level with technology, like with apps and mobile devices in general.

Nowadays there is so much support and tools are so widely used and available. There’s just overall a lot more understanding of how these tools work and even so, people have higher expectations than they realize.

If I can take a picture with my phone, how come I have to wait a week for someone to come to my house to take a picture of the tree that’s on my roof, when I can take a picture of the tree right now? I can send it to you.  I think a psychological shift has happened.

Virtual collaboration really fits into this niche. It’s the same reason that banks nowadays all have to have a really slick mobile app. Because people don’t want to have to go to a bank anymore to manage their account.

It’s why we all have faster expectations of service, in general. The insurance industry is reacting to that and really recognizes the fact that there are a ton of situations where the customer’s expectation is going to be that they can totally finish something or close out their claim quickly.

No one wants to wait a week or two to get your check in the mail for something that’s super simple.

I will say on the carrier’s side,  having a tool that your customers can use, especially for smaller things like smaller claims or smaller losses is also really useful. It saves them effort. Back in the old days before you had the ability to do any sort of collaborative inspection, every single loss, every single claim that was filed had to have somebody go take a look at it.

You had to send somebody to drive out on site. There could be hours of travel. It could be potentially even days depending on where the claim is located. And you have no idea what the value of that claim could be. 

Even today, you have situations where an adjuster might be driving three hours each way to see a claim that’s only worth a thousand dollars. Using a virtual tool allows them to triage and filter out those smaller low severity, high frequency claims. It gives them more time to focus on the big stuff. More focus on the important losses where there is really genuine damage or a lot more value associated both for them and for the policy holder.

Alex Frazier (15m 7s): Do you have any examples of how Livegenic has helped insurance companies?

Loden Cullar-Ledford (15m 12s): For sure. Actually my, my favorite example, because it’s both a really good example and it’s also a little bit close to home for me is as it relates to hurricane Harvey and Irma back in like 2017, I grew up in Houston.

Houston was right, smack in the middle of where the storm hit. So there was a huge, huge increase in volume for a bunch of our clients and customer partners. It was something around the range of like ten times as much typical monthly volume in the eight or so weeks following the storms. So there was this huge number of claims.

We had clients from companies that were in Colorado and Nevada, far off places that had been sending their teams in to the Houston and Gulf areas to handle this massive increase in claims and started using our tool. One of our clients specifically was able to process against something like ten times as many claims as what their usual volume was in those two months or so after the storm.

What that really let them do is focus specifically on the losses that were really severe, really high value losses. However, they could also quickly get checks dispersed and clean up the smaller stuff. This helped the folks who just had minor damage that still needs to get inspected, especially in catastrophic events, like Harvey and Irma. If you have pretty minor damage to your house, it might be a month and a half. It might be six, eight weeks before you even get someone to take a look at it. If it is even minor piece damage, a broken window or something, you don’t want to have to wait. If you fix it beforehand, then how are you going to prove that it happened?

Being able to have a quick tool to run through and do these really fast inspections with the homeowners or with policy holders to kind of clear out the small stuff helps to get those finished. That helps you to focus on the major losses, the big stuff, where homes have been totally flooded out or destroyed. I think that’s a really great example of the value of these kinds of tools.

Alex Frazier (17m 5s): Yeah, for sure. I think just the amount of time saved and the reduction in cost is such a huge benefit to companies that would use a tool like this.

So I know we’ve covered a lot of things over the last few minutes. Do you have any final thoughts or anything that you would like to elaborate on? Was there anything I didn’t ask you?

Loden Cullar-Ledford (17m 27s): Sure. In general, what I want to say is I think the insurance industry as a whole, gets sort of a bad rap for being stuck in the old ways. But what I would actually say is that I’ve actually seen a substantial amount of change, even just in the last four years since I have been working at Livegenic. I think there has been a huge shift in the way that carriers and claims organizations see Insuretech solutions like Livegenic.

There’s a whole bunch of other Insuretech right now that is making the headlines. For example, when we went to trade shows back in 2016, the questions that we got from people who come up and talk to us were, about what people use this for or how this would help. Or “why is this adding value now, considering I haven’t had that question in two years?” The questions are about specific workflows we can cover. Even the carriers and organizations that haven’t deployed a tool like this yet have done their research, they see the value in it. Obviously they’re still making a purchase decision, but I think it really shows that the industry is reacting.

I think the insurance industry is actually doing a really good job quickly making these reactive decisions and evolving with the times. It’s partly through the threat of force, though, because customers nowadays are not as brand loyal as they used to be. I mean, people will absolutely shift to a new carrier if the one that they have today isn’t supporting their needs.

But on the flip side, that’s actually driving a lot of really positive change in the industry. I am genuinely excited to see what the state of the industry will be in even just like a year or two. I think it’s changing that quick.

Alex Frazier (19m 15s): I think it’s definitely moving in a rapid pace and tools just like Livegenic are going to help so many companies get to where they want to go.

Loden, thank you so much for being on our podcast today. We greatly appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Loden Cullar-Ledford (19m 32s): Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Alex. 

Alex Frazier (24m 38s): Well, that’s all that we have for you guys today. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. The Orange Chair Podcast is brought to you by KeyMark.

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This podcast is produced by Greg Aiken, Clay Tuten and me, your host, Alex Frazier. Until next time, bye guys.