Columbia Insurance Group Selects Gradient AI to Increase Claims Efficiency and Accuracy

November 1, 2022

The insurer will use the vendor’s AI-powered technology to alert adjusters to high-risk workers’ compensation and commercial auto claims.

By Anthony O'Donnell

Columbia Insurance Group (Columbia, Mo.), a property/casualty carrier serving customers and independent agents across 14 states in the Midwest and Southeast, has selected Gradient AI (Boston) solutions to innovate its claims operations for both workers’ compensation and commercial auto claims.

Recently, the Columbia was seeking a better approach to reducing claims duration and reaching more accurate claim settlements for clients, according to a Gradient AI statement. Columbia turned to the vendor to help it identify and quickly address workers’ comp and commercial auto claims with higher potential severity, while better managing costs and reducing risk for the company’s clients.

Gradient AI says that its claims management solution identifies high severity claims earlier, enabling Columbia’s adjusters and supervisors to act before these claims develop into high-cost drivers. In addition to that advantage, in an industry facing a generation of adjusters that will soon retire, Columbia saw Gradient AI’s solution potential to capture and retain the expertise of seasoned adjusters with decades of industry experience and transfer it to newer employees, reducing training time dramatically, the vendor statement says.

“Gradient AI’s solution will allow us to settle claims faster, fairer and more accurately, delivering a better customer experience,” comments Michael LeBlanc, VP, claims, Columbia Insurance Group. “Its large, federated database, blended with the data from our current claims management system, will help us to learn from tens of millions of claims observations throughout the industry, providing us with important insights.”



Settling Claims more Accurately and Efficiently

Gradient AI reports that its claims solution enables teams to triage claims by predicting the risk level of new and existing claims automatically. It transforms claims operations from a reactive process to a proactive one, enabling insurers to identify high-risk claims before they explode into significant cost drivers. The vendor asserts that its AI-powered solutions are more accurate than other solutions because they not only learn from an insurance company’s own data, but also from a high-resolution industry federated database with millions of observations and ten times the features of legacy assessment processes.

“By incorporating AI into its claims process, Columbia Insurance Group is revolutionizing the way its claims administration and settlement operations are handled in the workers’ compensation and commercial auto insurance areas,” says Stan Smith, founder and CEO, Gradient AI. “We are pleased to partner with an insurance industry leader of the caliber of Columbia as it processes and settles claims more quickly and accurately, a scenario where everybody wins.”

This article first appeared on Insurance Innovation Reporter.