Claims Benchmarking Insights

Every claims organization thinks it knows how it is performing. External benchmarking usually reveals a different story.

Internal metrics like average cycle time and severity ratios are measured against internal history -- which means a carrier can be consistently on target while consistently trailing the market. Without external reference points, improvement plateaus become invisible.

The most useful benchmarking goes beyond cost per claim to include customer satisfaction, litigation rates by line and geography, reopened claim frequency, and subrogation recovery ratios. These dimensions reveal operational quality that cost metrics alone obscure.

The carriers using benchmarking most effectively are those who tie it to specific improvement sprints rather than annual reporting exercises. The data has to drive a decision to be worth collecting.