Industry Insights with Laura Schoefer and Robb Johnson: How in-house claims are a catalyst for underwriting success

Laura Schoefer is the EVP and Head of Commercial Casualty Claims at DUAL, and Robb Johnson is the President of Catalytic Claims Services. Both bring a deep legal and technical background to DUAL, and are licensed attorneys. As counterparts, Laura oversees claims across DUAL’s casualty programs, and Robb leads claims for programs across both commercial and personal property. Together, they manage the entirety of DUAL’s wholly owned, in-house claims teams, a powerful driver of innovation and success within the business. With a strong track record of favorable outcomes for partners and insureds alike, we sat down with these two claims leaders to understand the depth of value an in-house claims team can provide and discuss what sets DUAL’s Claims program apart in the industry.

A culture of commitment to claims excellence

DUAL’s in-house claims model is a powerful competitive advantage. The DUAL Claims team believes that providing excellent customer service requires more than just a well-designed process; it also requires a culture of commitment to execute that process. Across every program, claims professionals at DUAL are highly experienced and embody DUAL’s service commitment, focusing on efficient and fair claims settlements that protect policyholders. DUAL Claims is known for providing a high standard of customer service, enabled by expertise built into product design, collaboration across the entire business, deeply responsive processes, frequent and transparent communication, and delivery on promises. No matter who is handling the claim, every member of the DUAL Claims team has the appropriate level of expertise and understanding of the exposure presented by the claim. While most MGA’s don’t utilize this same approach (insurancetimes.co.uk), the movement to build this type of in-house infrastructure is gaining popularity due to the credibility, feedback, and technological advances they can provide (insurancejournal.com).

Deeply important to the success of DUAL is the real-time feedback loop that has been developed by claims and underwriting, ensuring that knowledge is shared across teams. At DUAL, the team uses data-driven insights to adapt programs in real time, ensuring intelligent product evolution as needed, as well as supporting a more seamless claims experience for insureds and brokers. Claims are not simply a back-end function that exists in the context of underwriting guidelines, but rather a driver of DUAL’s innovation, pricing, and long-term program health. DUAL Claims is an integral part of the process at DUAL and is heavily involved in product development, as new products are created or existing ones are revised. As a result, finding meaningful solutions for insureds is always front of mind, and customer experience is a key factor throughout the development and refinement of programs.

Claims as the catalyst for innovation

The Claims team is deeply ingrained in operations at DUAL. The structure that the team has built enables immediate visibility into things like loss trends, pricing strategy, and market changes. While traditional TPAs serve an important role in the insurance industry and MGA space, their model isn’t built for this; reporting typically lags activity by weeks or months, as they’re often unable to communicate what’s happening in the market in real time, instead surfacing those insights 60–90 days later. DUAL’s claims teams communicate constantly with underwriting and are able to increase the relevance and stickiness of programs, driving higher renewal rates and overall partner loyalty.

This feedback loop in action is critical to DUAL’s success. In one example, a casualty program was seeing claims come through for a completely avoidable risk. Rather than waiting for delayed feedback from an external third-party administrator, DUAL Claims immediately shared that data with the team to make key changes to underwriting guidelines, before the avoidable exposure impacted performance. In addition to acting as a real-time indicator of program success, this feedback loop also functions as an innovator. Through claims, DUAL can track what’s happening to insureds in the market and adapt policies and guidelines in real time, using current market data pulled from actual policyholders. The team doesn’t need to rely solely on industry-wide trends in claims because real data from the team’s ongoing and historical claims database is always accessible, and there is a culture of urgency about how to respond to this data.