Embracing the future of claims technology

About Argenta

Argenta Syndicate Management Limited is a Lloyd’s managing agency underwriting through Argenta Syndicate 2121. It writes a balanced portfolio of Direct and Facultative Property, Power and Utility, Energy, Marine, Marine and Energy Liability, Treaty Reinsurance, Terrorism, Political Risks, Casualty, and UK SME business.

Argenta’s claims team is a key part of the service it provides, with specialist technical expertise across all the lines of business it writes. With many decades of experience, and the technical knowledge to handle claims of all types and sizes, it delivers a consistent claims service to its customers, incorporating best practice. Argenta’s claims team prides itself on swift decision making and excellent claims management.

Watching and waiting

When David Thompson joined Argenta as Claims and Reinsurance director in 2013, he was already familiar with the development and early adoption of claims management systems in the Lloyd’s and London (re)insurance market. Over time, the benefits of having a dedicated claims management system (CMS) were starting to look increasingly persuasive. For a medium sized claims operation like Argenta’s however – one that managed to run a highly efficient and responsive claims service working purely with ECF – the financial case was still not clear-cut.

By October 2018, it was clear to David that the technology and the business case for investing in CMS had moved on again. Write-Back had been introduced in 2015, and providers like DOCOsoft were developing significantly extended CMS functionality. At this point, David began looking at potential providers in earnest. As Covid-19 arose, peaked, and subsided again, with the Future at Lloyd’s agenda appearing over the horizon, it was clear the time had come to adopt a CMS, and Argenta began a detailed review of the various CMS providers’ offerings.

Assessing the options

For Argenta, the benefit of being a relatively late adopter of claims technology was that the available systems had achieved a degree of maturity and – to a greater or lesser extent – a ‘tried and tested’ status. Having narrowed the field to a handful of the more promising candidates, Argenta put out a formal RFP.

One of its key stipulations was that the introduction of any new CMS should have a minimal impact on day-to-day business. There was a conscious decision not to migrate previous claims but to transition organically to the new platform. Having reviewed the various responses to its RFP, and seen demos of the various systems under review, Argenta ultimately concluded that DOCOsoft offered the best fit, offering a user-friendly single-interface overlay to ECF, with a broad range of functionality including, amongst other things, an outstanding diary management system.

Putting it into practice

With DOCOsoft selected, the project moved on to fine-tuning the specifications and then to implementation. This proved a refreshingly different experience for Argenta’s project team. David remarks on how collaborative the process felt, with a real sense of trust quickly established between Argenta’s and DOCOsoft’s project teams. “Not many projects go like that, there were always people available,” he recalls. “Even out of office hours, we had the benefit of having highly knowledgeable DOCOsoft people in other time zones available to pick queries up and move them forward overnight.”

The implementation proceeded smoothly and rapidly, and Argenta went live on the DOCOsoft CMS in October 2022. Argenta had taken the decision to go with a cloud-based CMS solution, primarily based on the belief that off-site hosting is the shape of things to come. The decision was made easier by months-long lead times for server hardware at the time – the result of pandemic-related chip shortages. Argenta also decided to take advantage of a number of DOCOsoft modules providing extended functionality, including Gemini API, SCM reconciliation and Volume Claims Services (VCS).

Reaping the benefits

Through dedication and professionalism, Argenta’s claims team were already operating very efficiently prior to the new CMS, achieving consistently high claims-response scores from Lloyd’s. But most of the members of its 13-strong team had previous experience working with DOCOsoft or another CMS system, and few were in any doubt that the new technology would considerably boost productivity and take some of the stress out of meeting the same high standards.

David recalls the pleasure of seeing the first ECF entries coming through on the day the new CMS went live and seeing all the dashboards start to populate.

He says “I can get a real-time picture of everything that’s happening.” DOCOsoft’s system is known for its exceptional user-friendliness, and it didn’t take Argenta’s claims adjusters long to gain familiarity and confidence in working with it. The team was soon getting through greater workloads in the same space of time. One obvious benefit was that, with DOCOsoft’s CMS in place, they can now work on claims in the queue whenever DXC is down. Another is the powerful diary management functionality within the DOCOsoft CMS. There’s a compelling argument for having everything adjusters need available within a single platform and achieving something as close as possible to a cradle to grave experience.

Moving forward together

Just as the need to put appropriate technology in place to reap the benefits of future developments around Blueprint Two was a key driver of the decision to bring in a dedicated CMS, so selecting a provider well placed to adapt to the future of claims in London and around the world was a key factor in Argenta’s decision to select DOCOsoft. With DOCOsoft people closely in touch with – and actively helping to shape – future developments around claims technology and market infrastructure, Argenta’s claims team can look forward with confidence to delivering a consistently outstanding claims service to their clients and partners.

“I would struggle to find fault with the service we have had from DOCOsoft. The implementation process was quite possibly the smoothest and least problematic technology project I have ever been involved in. We look forward to working closely with the senior team at DOCOsoft and their business analysts to ensure we benefit fully from all the new claims functionality and data we now have available to us.”

– David Thompson, Claims & Reinsurance Director, Argenta