ANZIIF Webinar to hear how insurtech can revolutionise the insurance value chain

Leaving a corporate career for the unchartered territory of insurtech is not for the faint hearted. When the reason is driven by a desire to bring innovation and change to traditional ways of operating, the risks can seem even higher, and the rewards even greater. 

This desire to create positive change is the motivation behind insurtech platform Handdii, co-founded by former QBE executive Kathryn Wood. Handdii streamlines the property claims process by connecting customers directly with contractors for insurance companies.

Sharing technology expertise 

Wood is one of the speakers at the upcoming ANZIIF webinar, ‘Insurtech across the value chain’, which features insights from insurtech leaders about driving innovation, efficiency and customer-centricity. 

“In 2017, I saw a great opportunity to solve a big problem in the insurance industry for not just insurers, but also tradespeople and customers,” says Wood, who is also Handdii’s chief operating officer. 

“There are lots of stop gaps in a traditional claims process. There are also lots of different stakeholders involved, lots of decision points and there's an awful lot of communication. Often, the communication is not very clear and the customer is not sure who they should be interacting with. We wanted to fix that.” 

Improving the customer experience 

Wood’s experience with QBE included heading up the motor and property claims division, managing a $1.5 billion dollars claims indemnity spend and leading large teams across Australia and the Philippines.

She also led significant change programs across customer experience, service design and business improvement and transformation. 

A desire to improve the customer experience through a property insurance claims process led Wood, along with her co-founder Christie Downs, to launch Handdii in 2019. 

“I was working at QBE when it struck me that the customer experience from a claims perspective is never a really comfortable one,” says Wood.

“My co-founder was a director of a large construction company, and she identified that smaller property insurance claims could be going to local contractors instead of bigger firms, so they can help customers streamline the process. That’s really where we started from.”

Engaging stakeholders effectively

Wood describes Handdii as an ecosystem that connects customers directly with pre-vetted, highly rated local contractors on behalf of insurance companies.

Essentially, the platform engages the different stakeholders along the journey and allows them to communicate effectively, view the scope of work and then authorise and sign-off on the work.

From transforming the way insurers operate, to how they interact with customers and manage risk, technology is providing insurers and consumers alike with new opportunities. 

Wood explains that Handdii simplifies the process of connecting key players in a claims process. 

“One of the biggest challenges that any insurance company has is that there are a lot of tools out there that are going to make claims management faster, more efficient, and more accurate,” she says.

“But how do you get those products into the hands of the people who are physically on-site putting hammer to nail? That is often where the problems can occur. And that's where technology like Handdii can really assist.”

A no-brainer solution

For customers, Handdii is a seamless digital experience that enables customers to register their claim and get the right local contractor to repair their property quickly. 

For contractors, it removes the admin hassle from the job. For insurers, Handdii represents a savvy tech offering that can save significant claims costs.

Wood describes the solution as a “no brainer”. “We are very customer centric in the information and the way that we deploy information to the end consumer,” she says. “And we're exceptionally mindful of the contractors in our network, because without those contractors, Handdii doesn't exist.”

Handdii’s first partnership was with Allianz in Australia and, in parallel, the business was accepted into an accelerator program in Hartford, Connecticut, where they started talking to the US insurance industry. Wood says that is when the founders knew they had a viable offering in both markets.

“The Australian market was slow to adapt,” explains Wood, who is now based in Las Vegas. “We met a lot of American insurers and we soon discovered that the same problem existed over here - and so we decided that we'd give it a crack.”

Wood relocated from Sydney to manage the business from Las Vegas and says the US market has been highly receptive to Handdii.  

“Our first customer was Hippo Insurance and we launched with them in 2019 in Texas and then expanded across to California,” she says. “Since then, we've brought in an additional 10 regional  carriers and we've got two larger carriers. We're now operating in more than 30 states, which is pretty awesome.”

Success driven by results

Wood adds that much of Handdii’s success is driven by the results experienced by insurance customers.

“One of the stats that we're pretty proud of is that a claims officer can triple the number of files that they're managing,” says Wood.

“We know that the number of inbound calls into a claims division is reduced from around 4.3 calls to 1.4 calls, and that's just because the customers know what's happening and they've got the right communication at different points.”

Before launching Handdii, Wood and her co-founder spent time understanding what insurers, contractors and consumers wanted from a claims process. The next step was to understand what technology existed to help them solve the barriers.

“We wanted a platform that would meet the requirements of the insurance industry, but which didn't tie us into a lengthy development cycle while we started experimenting,” says Wood. “We wanted something where we could iterate quickly as we tried new ideas.”

Wood says this attitude is crucial for insurers to adopt for the future. 

“In insurtech, you can't be afraid of failing, because failure is just part of what we actually do in this experimentation process,” she says. “

For the insurance company, it's having an appetite for the fact that failure is just part and parcel of the pathway towards something better.”

Gaining insights into seamless service

During the upcoming ANZIIF insurtech webinar, Wood will share insights into how technology-based solutions can seamlessly connect service providers to customers, resulting in a more efficient claims experience.

For Wood, part of the role of insurtech is to challenge the notion of ‘we've always done it this way, so why change?’.

“There are certain parts of the value chain in insurance that are harder to disrupt than others,” she says. “Often, it is not even about disruption - it's actually just getting in and making the process easier, smarter, better. 

“The challenge for insurtech is you can't actually disrupt this type of industry. You have to work from the inside out,” adds Wood.

“You've got to look and feel enough like the incumbents, but offer an edge that helps the insurance industry to understand or be able to visualise the benefits of doing things differently.”

Find out more about Insurtech across the value chain in our webinar