Modern Insurance Magazine sits down with Nik Ellis, Managing Director at Laird, to discuss the recent positive impact of Artificial Intelligence on business operations in the repair sector.
Q. Nik, tell me how advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) is enabling your smart Vehicle Damage Assessment (VDA) services at Laird.
The AI we’ve added over the past year has certainly turbocharged our operations. However, a turbo needs an engine to boost, and in our case, that engine is Swiftcase, our automation platform.
Automation is a fundamental step for digitising most businesses and lays the foundation for further AI enhancements. We decided to automate our systems a few years ago, as we found that our engineers were spending a large percentage of their day shifting data around, not engineering. Things like copying & pasting policy numbers from one unique system to another, rather than examining crashed cars.
The systems they were using were essential to our business; estimating programs, car value guides, vehicle data, client data, consumer data, etc, so we created API links to extract the data and, following the same rules our staff do, utilise the data to create a report. For example if repair costs exceed the value of the vehicle, the automation started creating a total loss report. Using “if this, then that” style rules we were able to use smart automation to do the heavy lifting.
Now that we have created an automation ecosystem, it has become the backbone which we now augment with several AI applications from new instruction through to accounts paid & beyond. We pick & choose our apps carefully though, as there’s a lot of hype surrounding AI and we only want tech that’s useful and advances the business.
Q. How have you seen advanced AI improve communication and streamline the consumer journey?
Contemporary & large-volume clients understand the advantages of interacting API connections, but many still communicate via email, so we use an AI to read the incoming mail & assign it a route according to category; new instructions, supplementary damage notifications, whatever it maybe. Being able to understand an email allows for instant and consistent handling of our client communications, enabling us to send almost instantaneous responses in some cases. Our clients benefit from their email being assigned instantly to the appropriate person meaning a faster response.
Most parts of the workflow are now enhanced or augmented by AI, providing swifter and more efficient services to both our clients and the end consumers.
Q. Laird have recently been nominated for the Excellence in AI Award at the British Insurance Technology Awards 2024. How does this reflect Laird’s dedication to disrupting the insurance industry?
We’re not really out to disrupt insurers, more facilitate a smoother, more efficient supply-chain. AI, and indeed any tech, needs to be practical and useful for a business. The difference in the last couple of years having AI at our fingertips means a lot of sawdust products; things that we’ve created for ourselves, becoming actually quite useful for our customers.
Does AI have a bit of a bad reputation? Its public rise came on the back of boom & bust fads such as NFTs or the Metaverse, so naturally people assumed it was just another craze. AI was largely headlined by ChatGPT, and once people had played with it a few times, they struggled to vision how it could have much practical application to a business or its work flow. However there’s much more to AI than simply generative apps; to date at Laird we have a dozen different AIs helping us, our customers, even our developers.
AI & automation have allowed us to reduce our staff by over 60%. We’ve actually got more engineers now, but significantly less admin, accounts, data-entry people. Production is up by 30% during this period. These sort of headline stats are proof that our tech is practical & functional within a business. I’m sure our clients would vouchsafe for our added value products & tools we give them.
Q. What sets Laird apart from the rest, and what lies in store for Laird in the latter half of 2024?
We provide a huge amount of added value services. Partnering with our clients allows us to understand what they do with our report. An obvious example is that our report determines whether the vehicle is repairable or a total loss. Rather than the client’s staff arranging collection, repairs, hire cars, etc, our automation will instruct the client’s approved repairer based on their location and availability, instruct the hire department to provide a hire vehicle and keep all stakeholders informed throughout the process; length of hire, repair issues, parts delays, etc. All visible & controllable by our clients.
There’s several easily bolt-on items like this that save clients time, but then we also offer consumer facing solutions such as a self-service Image App link which allows them to take a series of curated images to allow us to triage or report within minutes. It’s a text link, so no app to download and is easily set up in the client’s branding and wording tone. We use chatbots to help consumers; one of our most successful is the total loss bot which allows a 24/7 settlement of pre-accident values with consumers.
For the rest of this year, we have numerous ideas. Some are straightforward and will be implemented soon, while others are larger projects. All are designed to benefit us, our clients, and their consumers.
By Nik Ellis