Crawfords launches Broadspire

What is Broadspire? As from today, Crawford is re-branding its TPA services in the UK as ‘Broadspire, a Crawford company’. Broadspire is a TPA that Crawford purchased in the USA a few years ago. It’s now become the brand for the TPA services that we currently offer in the UK. We’re obviously still very much part of the Crawford family and able to draw upon the wealth of experience and knowledge that our colleagues have in the USA. Having a new brand, our own brand identity and logo is our way of telling the world that the TPA work we do is very important to us and that we understand that it’s different from that undertaken by our loss adjusting division and has different business drivers.

Broadspire will have its own website (www.broadspiretpa.co.uk) and its own marketing campaign and literature. Of course, as and when necessary, we will still be able to call upon the expertise of Crawford’s loss adjusters throughout any of the 63 countries within which we operate. At our stand at this AIRMIC conference, we are revealing our new logo with our new colours. We are building our proposition around three key elements – quality, consistency and passion. Our tag line is ‘passionate about TPA’. We are also using Broadspire as a platform to drive forward into the future. It’s not just a re-branding exercise but a whole project in which we’re looking at the services we offer to our corporate clients to see how we can enhance them and put ourselves ahead of our competitors for some time to come.

What other changes have you made? We wanted to ensure that we had an excellent platform for our business going forward so we’ve taken a number of other steps. We’ve reviewed our whole internal structure looking at how it’s set up and how we work. We have re-engineered our process and we are making some substantial changes to our claims management system, e-Claims.

All this is being done to help ensure that we meet the requirements of our clients, ultimately deliver a better service and, most importantly, take necessary steps to help reduce their claims spend. It’s about adding innovation into our services and being progressive. We’re not sitting on our laurels in the way that we handle claims. We’ve been involved in providing TPA services for a long time but they haven’t had the market profile they deserve.

Has the rise in fraudulent claims resulting from the recession caused you and your clients any problems? As far as our services are concerned, we try to stay one step ahead of the game. We have always had a robust fraud detection process in place and at present we are reinforcing that and double-checking everything we do.

We’ve seen an increase in claims in a number of areas, particularly in respect of motor incidents and low velocity motor claims. These involve the situation where two vehicles collide at a very low speed and people then claim whiplash and similar serious injuries. Often you can get a bad whiplash injury from such incidents but these type of accidents can breed fraudulent claims so we are working closely with forensic engineers to look at individual accidents and to confirm whether claimed injuries were legitimate and related to the accident. We’re also seeing people claiming for things that they would not have claimed for before. The list of items claimed under

‘special damage’ is growing. While the majority of claimants are of course genuine, some people are seeking to claim for everything as well as exaggerating their claims generally. We always look at fraud through the lifecycle of the claim. What other issues are affecting your business?

The Rehabilitation Act means we have a duty now to look at rehabilitation with every personal injury claim. We’re taking a very proactive approach. If someone has had a whiplash injury and would have to wait a long time for treatment under the NHS, we are offering them private physiotherapy so they are treated much quicker. This provides a great solution all round.

The claimant recovers quicker and they are very pleased with the service – which benefits our clients. Also reducing employees’ time off work and getting them back to work quicker helps our clients to reduce their overall claims spend. Taking this proactive approach also has the effect of discouraging exaggerated claims.

Obviously at Broadspire we cover all lines of business but currently we’re focusing on a number of key areas including liability and the motor arena, where we think that there is a lot more that could be done. Crawford’s Paul Bermingham, vice president, global motor, is, for example, jointly leading a workshop at the conference tomorrow morning about motor claims and the comprehensive service we provide to risk managers.

The message is that new technology can provide risk managers with a new set of tools to manage their fleets. The aim is to provide an effective solution for fleet managers which will help reduce the overall cost of their repair bills and minimise the time their vehicles are off the road. Has the recession hit your own business?

We have never been busier! In the current climate, companies want more control over their risks and to make sure that claims handling is done in a way that mirrors their own business values and protects their brand. Increasingly too our business is becoming more global. Most of our clients have operations in other countries besides the UK and they’re looking for TPA to extend across their whole programme regardless of how many countries are involved.