Almost every insurer, fleet operator, and mobility company has digitized its claims process. Notifications arrive online, documents are scanned, workflows are automated, and dashboards are in place; yet, in conversations with heads of claims and IT across Europe, the same three frustrations keep coming up.
Claims handlers still spend a large part of their day assembling files instead of assessing them. The process still breaks at the handovers between systems, departments and external partners. And management still sees performance after the fact, in a monthly report, rather than while it can still be influenced.
Digital is not the same as connected.
Van Ameyde handles claims across Europe for insurers, fleet and lease companies and mobility providers, and builds the technology that its own claims professionals work with every day. That position gives a view of the claims market that individual organizations rarely have: we see the same patterns repeated across countries, lines of business and operating models, often before a single organization recognizes them in its own numbers.
For Koen Molenaar, Sales & Innovation Manager at Van Ameyde, who has worked at the intersection of claims and technology for more than two decades, those patterns lead to a clear conclusion for anyone responsible for claims outcomes: the question is no longer whether the claims process is digital. It is whether it is connected, efficient, and intelligent, reducing manual administrative work.
Three questions help separate the two: who handles the claims and what technology sits underneath.
Digital information is not the same as usable information.
In most organizations, claims professionals still spend considerable time collecting documents, entering data, gathering information, and preparing a file before the actual assessment can begin. That time is invisible in most business cases, but it is the single largest source of avoidable cost and delay we see.
Modern claims technology should move that work forward in the process. Information can be collected, validated, structured, enriched, and interpreted at the moment of notification, so the handler starts with a complete and verified file.
Take a motor claim reported by a car rental company or a fleet operator. The vehicle, the driver, and the rental or lease agreement are already known in their systems. Through a direct API connection, that information can be pushed into the claims platform at First Notice of Loss, together with photos, a damage description, and the relevant policy or contract data. The claims handler opens a file that is already populated and validated, rather than a form that still needs to be filled in.
The same applies to checks that today often happen late in the process: verifying cover, identifying duplicate notifications, or flagging a claim that qualifies for a fast-track settlement. The earlier those checks run, the less rework there is downstream.
“The claims handler should not have to build the file. The file should be presented to them.” Koen Molenaar, Sales & Innovation Manager at Van Ameyde
The value goes beyond saving time. A better-prepared file allows claims professionals to focus on assessment, judgment, communication, and the situations where their expertise adds the most value. The goal is not to automate every decision; it is to remove repetitive work so that human expertise is applied where it matters.
Optimizing one part of the process does not automatically improve the whole.
A highly efficient intake process creates limited value when information must later be re-entered, transferred manually, or retrieved from another system. And in claims, a large part of the journey runs through parties outside your own organization: repairers, experts, assistance providers, lawyers, other insurers.
The greater opportunity lies in connecting the claims journey end to end, from First Notice of Loss and triage through assessment, handling, payment, and closure, across every system and partner involved.
“Also in our claims handling process, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” Koen Molenaar, Sales & Innovation Manager at Van Ameyde
Connecting these steps reduces handovers and ensures that relevant information follows the claim throughout the process. It also creates visibility: where a claim is in the process, what requires attention, and where delays or bottlenecks are developing.
That visibility is what turns a service level agreement into something more than a clause in a contract. An SLA only steers behavior if the people doing the work can see, at any moment, which claims are approaching their deadline, which partner or handover is on the critical path, and where a decision is waiting. Connected data makes that possible; disconnected systems reduce it to a report compiled after the fact.
“Measuring a service level afterward is easy. Being able to act before the deadline passes is what is relevant.” Koen Molenaar, Sales & Innovation Manager at Van Ameyde
The practical test is simple: ask how your claims process exchanges information with the partners in your chain today, and what happens to the file when a claim moves between them. In our experience, the answer says more about future performance than any feature list.
Every processed claim generates information. When that information is connected and structured, it can do much more than document what happened to an individual claim. It provides insight into volumes, workloads, cycle times, cost trends, patterns and outliers, per country, line of business or partner.
For an insurer, a fleet operator or a broker, that means a portfolio view that is refreshed from the same data the claims handlers work in. Not a spreadsheet compiled at the end of the month, but a live picture of how the portfolio is performing and where it deviates from what was agreed.
That is what control means in a connected claims process. Not control in the sense of checking every step, but the ability to see, to steer and, increasingly, to predict: which claims are likely to become complex, where capacity will be needed next week, and which suppliers consistently deliver within the agreed norms.
This is also where artificial intelligence changes the picture, provided it is applied to a connected process.
Where AI adds value, and where it does not
Much of the current attention in claims goes to AI, and rightly so. In practice, we see three levels of value.
Better preparation. Reading and classifying incoming documents, extracting information from an e-mail, an invoice, or a police report, and summarizing a long file. This is where most organizations start, and it directly feeds the finished file described above.
Better decisions. AI can present the handler with a structured proposal: the likely liability position, the applicable cover, comparable claims, and the recommended next step, together with the sources it used. The handler decides; the system ensures every handler decides based on the same complete information. That is how consistency of decisions improves across teams, countries, and partners, which is something clients and regulators increasingly expect to be demonstrable.
Autonomous handling within thresholds. For claims that meet clear criteria, for example, a glass claim or a low-value motor damage below an agreed amount with verified cover and no indicators of fraud, the system can complete the assessment and payment itself, with the file fully traceable and the thresholds set and monitored by the business. The handler is freed up for the claims that need judgment; the client gets a settlement in hours rather than days.
None of this works in a fragmented process. Extracting data perfectly from a document adds little if that data is then re-typed into another system, or if the handler cannot see what the model based its suggestion on. In a connected process, AI becomes a traceable part of the file; in a fragmented one, it becomes yet another island.
“Connect first, then automate, then apply intelligence where it makes a difference. Doing it the other way around only automates the intake of fragmented data.” Koen Molenaar, Sales & Innovation Manager at Van Ameyde
Technology alone does not answer these three questions, and neither does claims expertise alone. The answer lies in the combination: people who handle claims every day and technology built around the way they work. That combination is Van Ameyde’s strength. We handle claims across Europe, and we develop the technology our own claims professionals use, so every lesson from the operation flows back into the platform, and every improvement in the platform is tested in real claims first.
Decades of handling claims across Europe provide continuous insight into where processes become complicated, where information gets fragmented, and where professionals benefit from better technological support.
That is how ECHO, Van Ameyde’s claims management platform, came about. ECHO connects processes, information, data and expertise across the claims journey: from the API-connected intake, through the handling chain and its partners, to the portfolio insight and AI-supported decisions described in this article. Whether Van Ameyde handles the claims on your behalf or your own teams work in ECHO, the connected process and the insight it produces are the same.
Rather than treating claims handling as a collection of separate systems and activities, ECHO creates one connected environment in which technology supports the flow of the claim from start to finish, and in which intelligence is applied where it makes a difference.
The next step in claims technology is not doing more digitally. It is making the entire process work better together: connecting information, reducing manual activity, creating consistency, turning data into insight, and applying AI where it improves decisions rather than merely accelerating them.
For claims professionals, that means focusing their expertise where it matters most. For the organizations that rely on them, it means transparency on agreed service levels, insight into their portfolio, and confidence that their claims are in good hands.
That is the thinking behind the way Van Ameyde handles claims, and behind ECHO, the platform that makes it possible.
Discover how Van Ameyde combines claims expertise with ECHO to bring connectivity, efficiency, and control to your claims process.
