Paul Kearney serves as Chief Claims Officer for AF Group, leading the Claims team of the company’s affiliated brands to ensure ongoing exceptional support of policyholders and injured workers nationwide.
Kearney’s strong industry knowledge includes two decades of experience and strategic leadership. Prior to joining AF Group, he served as AVP, Workers’ Compensation at Travelers Insurance. Over the course of his career, Kearney has been recognized for successfully developing specialized claim solutions and medical management strategies to improve claim processes. He has also been recognized for his tireless efforts of creating leadership platforms designed to provide high-performing and diverse individuals with leadership training, exposure, and opportunities. His career has led to critical knowledge in a number of key areas, including risk management, corporate compliance, performance monitoring and people development.
1. As the Chief Claims Officer at AF Group, could you provide an overview of your role and responsibilities within the company?
My primary responsibility is to ensure that my team and I are providing strategic oversight, governance and collaborative partnership to our field claims teamin an effort to ensure they are able to optimize their outcomes with empathy and reflecting our advocacy-based culture. We look to employ matters of innovation, ideation, dataand analytics, predictive modeling, and intellectual brainstorming as a way of helping to achieve these goals.
We also share a responsibility of ensuring we maintain a people first culture – one that recognizes the uniqueness and strengths of our people while creating opportunities for them to have the support and resources needed to achieve their goals and reach their potential.
“Combining emerging technologies with tools of automation akin to RPAs or computer visioning can ultimately reduce operational costs, drive operational efficiencies, increase profitability, diminish human error and create more meaningful connections with one’s customer base”
And lastly, my team and I serve as the stewards of our Claims Center of Excellence. This platform was designed with the intent of transforming our Claims organization into an industry leader by focusing on strategic initiatives that are designed to create cost savings, claim efficienciesand technical proficiencies that serve to benefit our internal and external stakeholders. And I can proudly say that within two years of this initiative, we achieved our ROI goal and are continuing to do so.
2. What are some of the biggest challenges that you face in managing claims processes, particularly in the context of evolving regulatory environments and emerging risks?
As you know, our insurance industry continues to evolve and has become increasingly more regulated over time with an appropriate focus on protecting the myriad of stakeholders who flow through our industry.
One of the biggest challenges I see—and it is one that we fully embrace—is the need to balance finite resources against the need to deploy tools and resources that create claim efficiencies, loss avoidances, “right touch” customer engagement and exceptional outcomes for all of our stakeholders against the backdrop of being compliant with the regulatory entities that govern our industry.
In our advocacy-based approach and culture, we intentionally expend time and energy and use data and analytics to continuously assess the marketplace, new and future risks and our customers’ expectations so that we can better employ strategic measures that synchronize with ever-evolving regulatory requirements. In addition, we continually look for opportunities to streamline our claim processes to create ease and fluidity for our claim professionals to optimize their outcomes and productivity. In doing this, we also increase the opportunities for our team to be successful and for our customers’ expectations to be met.
3. The insurance industry is evolving rapidly, with advancements in artificial intelligence, automation, and other emerging technologies. How do you see these technologies transforming claims management, and what benefits do they offer?
The deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies along with the advancements of automation havecreated the opportunity for businesses across the spectrum to affect operational efficiencies, increase productivity, provide better accuracies of outcomes, achieve greater customer satisfaction intel and certainly effect cost savings. Companies have come to see the benefits of using such things as Chatbots, generative AI and optical character recognition and machine learning algorithms, for example, to do any number of things. For instance, the act of analyzing large components of historical data as a way of projecting what might be relevant for future events to identifying the propensities for fraud to assessing customers’ wants and expectations.
Combining these emerging technologies with tools of automation akin to RPAs or computer visioning can ultimately reduce operational costs, drive operational efficiencies, increase profitability, diminish human error and create more meaningful connections with one’s customer base.
At the same time, it is also important to remain cognizant of the ethical and privacy risks associated with the use of some of these technologies and tools and employ safety measures that minimize unwanted exposures to these perils.
4. As the Chief Claims Officer, what key trends or developments do you anticipate in the claims management landscape in the next few years?
This isa great question and one we could discuss at length. If I were to narrow these key trends or developments to five sectors, they would include:
● Labor Shortages
● Global Inflation
● Climate Changes and the impact on large losses
● An evolving focus on risk transfers to risk management
● Staying transformative through the use of technology and innovation and strategy
Any one of these things alone could create havoc for insurance carriers who are not being proactively intentional and intuitively active in sizing up these risks and taking actions to create their own trajectories for dealing with these potentially devasting developments. I take pride in noting that at AF Group, we encourage intellectual dialogue and customer facing interactions and the use of industry intel and data and analytics as a way of being ahead and ready for these developments.
5. What advice would you give to young professionals who are interested in pursuing a career in technology, and what qualities do you think are essential for success in this field?
As there are so many career facets within the insurance industry, there are equally as many career facets associated with technology. Whether it is from the perspective of managing people or processes or developing source codes or mounting devices associated with RPAs or OCRs or analyzing data as a data scientist or serving as a purveyor of generative artificial intelligence, one should start by identifying their interests. There are any number of studies that suggest individuals who understand their interests tend to develop a passion and value system more easilyfor the job and career they choose. This applies to any career.
In addition, and not just exclusive to a career in technology, I would offer that it is important for young professionals to hone soft skills that strengthen attributes associated with problem solving, strategic thinking and communication. I would encourage them to develop a passion for lifetime learning by staying intellectually curious and informed about the challenges and successes of their respective industry. And I would also encourage them to find a mentor with similar interests who can help them with this exploration.
And lastly, be wisely bold and courageous and look to do something that also provides a little measure of giving something back to this world.
