Driving Digital Innovations to the Next Level
Author: Joachim Geiger
After a hailstorm, thousands of car owners queue up for weeks to get an appointment to have their damaged vehicle inspected. This can be frustrating if the car is no longer in working condition. DEKRA is now tackling this bottleneck with its digital claims management.
“With our digital claims management, we offer vehicle insurers tiered, independent expert services that cover their specific requirements in a targeted manner," explains Marcel Ott, Head of Damage Assessment at DEKRA Automobil GmbH. There is a good chance that the expert organization is spot on with this offer. In recent years, mass damage caused by hail, heavy rain and storms has repeatedly made things difficult for insurers - in 2023 alone, the industry had to settle around 465,000 claims worth 1.3 billion euros in total. Naturally, tailor-made and efficient solutions for settling claims in partial cover insurance are of great interest. But what could a digital solution - for example after a severe hailstorm - look like? In summer 2024, together with an insurance company, DEKRA conducted a pilot project that could establish new and innovative claims settlement processes.
The needs of vehicle owners in mind
“As part of the project, we focused intensively on the concerns of vehicle owners,” reports Marcel Ott. After all, the consequences of hail damage are inconvenient for them in more ways than one. It is true that the partially covered insurance covers the repair or replacement costs of damaged vehicle parts. However, if thousands of vehicle owners stand in line for a collective inspection appointment in the case of mass damage, it can sometimes take five to six weeks before an expert has time to take a close look at a vehicle. “Until then, the policyholder doesn't know what the state of their vehicle is - whether it can be repaired or whether it might be a total loss,” Marcel Ott explains. This shortcoming is particularly problematic if the vehicle is no longer roadworthy due to the damage to the windows. In addition to the financial loss, this means a loss of mobility.
Mapping the claims process with digital resources
“We thought about how we could restore policyholders' mobility as quickly as possible - apart from assessing the hail damage to the bodywork,” says the DEKRA expert, describing the underlying objectives of the project. But how can a clear distinction be made in advance between roadworthy and unroadworthy vehicles? Due to the large number of damage reports, an on-site assessment by the experts is not an option. This is where the testing organization's digital resources come into play. More specifically, we are talking about highly complex software that can be used to map all the processes involved in handling vehicle damage - from reporting the damage to settling the claim. At the heart of the program is an artificial intelligence that has access to a huge database of real accident claims and damage appraisals. The analysis process also incorporates information from detailed vehicle identification and a daily updated vehicle valuation.
Identifying hail damage to the vehicle with AI
“This is the first time we have used our system to identify hail damage,” says Marcel Ott, outlining the approach, which always requires the consent and support of the policyholder. Once the policyholder has given his or her go-ahead, they will receive a link to a claims form on DEKRA's own platform. There, questions about the damage can be answered step by step in a guided process and images can be uploaded for documentation. The whole procedure usually takes just under five minutes. The AI system can then use this data to get started. In the pilot project, the focus was primarily on cars that were worth repairing and for which the system did not have to determine a total economic loss based on the current market value.
Efficient problem solving requires creative use of digital technology
The program then separated the damage reports into two groups - vehicles with hail damage that were fit to drive and vehicles that were no longer roadworthy due to hail damage to windows. The participants in group one were given a regular appointment for a collective inspection. For car owners in group two, the experts drew up a brief report at the desk to approve an emergency repair. This allowed the policyholder to go to their garage to commission the appropriate work to restore roadworthiness. As a result, the vehicle went from group two to group one to get an appointment for the assessment of the remaining hail damage. “With this model, we were charging open doors with our client - the entire process, from contacting the policyholder to approving the emergency repair for the insurer, took only one day,” says Marcel Ott.
For mass claims, experts rely on the digital innovation
In the future, the experts themselves could also switch on the digital turbo during a collective inspection of mass damage. In summer 2024, as part of another test program, DEKRA used hail scanners to record damage for the first time. Hail scanners are a comparatively new technology that uses artificial intelligence to relieve the burden on the expert when recording damage. As the damaged vehicle passes through the scanner, the system counts and assesses the dents. It uses video and high-resolution images to seamlessly document the registered damage. This means that in the event of a complaint - for example if the repair invoice differs significantly - objections can be processed quickly on a high-quality basis. DEKRA expert Marcel Ott draws a positive conclusion from the project: The scanner's speed and reproducibility of the results were particularly impressive. “Our experts have saved five to ten minutes of working time per vehicle thanks to the technical support when recording damage,” says Marcel Ott. In addition, the system is able to deliver consistent results with uniform quality, even with a large number of inspections.