Elevating customer experience, humanising claims: The backstory behind ‘Solutions in a Box’

Vastly improving turnaround times and personalising service delivery, QBE Asia’s award-winning, end-to-end bundled claims solutions is a game-changer for the insurance industry

For most people, filing an insurance claim is a stressful, laborious experience. The filling out of physical forms, submitting supporting documentation, delayed settlements, and lengthy discussions with insurers — among many other chores; these tasks typically make the claims process lengthy. Weeks. Sometimes months. For some speciality lines, even longer in many cases. This also means plenty of manual handling, triaging and prioritising processing, then truly interacting with customers.

But what if we could reduce the time it takes to process a claim to a day or two? And what if we took the anxiety out of the claims experience for customers and handlers, making it a low-touch, fuss-free experience?

This was the thinking behind QBE Asia’s Solution in a Box, bringing a suite of innovative tools, technology, processes and people to support clients, improve turnaround times and personalise service delivery. A journey that began a few years ago, and which continues to reach new heights today.

Realising ‘claims excellence’

The idea of automating and personalising claims is not new. But in 2022, when QBE Asia’s claims team first suggested the idea, the company was in a strong position to explore it further. Unlike many other insurers, QBE Asia’s claims technology ran off a single platform. The company was also in the somewhat unique position in that it had built all of its technology from scratch, rather than having to add to off-the-shelf legacy systems, which more often than not weren’t compatible with newer and more specialised software. It remains a unified platform that consolidates all capabilities, and which can be leveraged across Asia, fostering innovations like straight-through-processing (STP), while also simplifying governance and analytics across the region.

The other advantage QBE had was its deep commitment to claims excellence. For over a century of doing business in the region, the firm has built a reputation for being fair, consistent and trustworthy when it comes to assessing claims. Indeed, the company’s commitment to claims excellence is part of the company’s DNA, and is viewed by management as a strategic advantage.

Perhaps most significantly, the QBE Asia claims team had realised that in its past efforts to make cost and time efficiencies, the team was actually transferring processes and bottlenecks onto our customers, rather than finding solutions to these ourselves. This went against the grain of our ‘claims excellence’ mantra, and the decision to develop an automated and easy-to-use, self-service claims service was taken.

Putting customers first

Work on Solutions in a Box began early-2023. It was a truly collaborative effort. Not just among the different teams and stakeholders within the company; from day one it was a consultative process that involved customers and handlers as well. The claims team wanted to hear about customer and handler pain points, as well as how they envisioned such as service. Plus, we wanted to make these stakeholders feel supported and listened to.

We soon realised that neither wanted lengthy, back-and-forth discussions about their claims. They simply wanted an email or message telling them that payment had been made. To limit some of the mundane yet important information gathering, the development team also sought to leverage machine learning, in addition to STP, to enable a tailored and effortless eClaims journey for retail customers. At the back of each of these journeys sits a sophisticated analytics-backed rules engine, automating everything from start to finish.

With large amounts of claims now being fully automated, QBE is now able to shift its capabilities strategically, to remain consistent in building and sustaining relationships — while personalising customers experiences.

A multi-phase approach

Development of QBE’s eClaims solution took place in phases. First, we built a generic system that could be applied to most lines, particularly personal ones. We then incorporated unique features that corresponded to specific products and market nuances in the personal lines spaces — across travel, medical and motor, for instance; while catering for customer needs in Hong Kong, Malaysia or Singapore. Progress moved quickly.

We then enabled customers to receive automated WhatsApp notifications, to check their claim status online via a portal. Live Chat was also introduced for customers who prefer chatting to a person and not a chatbot. For customers in Malaysia, clients with a motor vehicle are able to access mobility solutions in the event that they need breakdown assistance or a tow for post-accident repair.

An all-encompassing solution

We didn’t stop there! We ensured every claim undergoes a rigorous quality assessment. A quality management system was soon implemented, to navigate seamlessly from one claim to another, and ensure to that in-depth file reviews happen automatically.

To enable timely claims payment, we connected our systems with those of our banking partners and implemented fast payment capabilities. To this end, what used to take five days in processing an approved claims payment, is today transacted instantly.

Not leaving our other partners behind, a supplier portal was introduced to maintain interactions with service providers, adjusters and legal providers in a secured manner. Unlike competitors with fragmented systems, QBE Asia delivers an all-encompassing solution that is a digitally unified, customer-first experience, which is scalable and future-ready.

Speciality claims

We also needed to cater for more complex claims. A large proportion of QBE Asia’s business involves speciality coverage, such as marine, casualty, and professional indemnity. Accordingly, we required additional features that supported claims made in these areas.

These included robotic process automation (RPA) to automate time-intensive, highly repetitive tasks that can be executed within minutes, rather than days if not weeks when caried out by humans. We built an application programming interface (API) to allow partner brokers and policy holders to interact with our team, thereby eradicating the need for lengthy emails and telephone calls when uploading supporting information for each claim. We also leverage a video conferencing capabilities, enabling all parties to connect and speak with one another.

Beyond that, what remains critical for complex lines is risk mitigations and preventions. Powered by claims insights that are generated through data analytics, we are able to generate constructive risk improvement strategies for our claims team as well as our broker partners.

These claims insights are also translated into data points, allowing us to further automate the claims journey and provide more accurate updates to customers — thereby keeping all parties up-to-date on progress. And lastly, our centralised servicing model: using QBE Asia’s Centre of Excellence, which houses highly skilled and experienced claims professionals under one roof, we were able to reach economies of scale, which also quickens the claims process.

The human touch

One of the most important features of Solutions in a Box is video conferencing. That customers and handlers are able to speak to a claims professional virtually humanises the experience. Most financial firms rely heavily on chatbots to interact with customers. And a large proportion of the time, these bots are unable to process and/or relate to the emotional elements that accompany most claims. Like anxiety over financial losses, or whether a business will survive a risk event.

For QBE Asia, video conferencing not only gives us the opportunity to quickly assess the legitimacy of a claim, it is also an opportunity to empathise with policy holders, and to learn more about their business challenges. Our video conferencing feature is complimented with a live chat option, which is also manned by humans.

Moreover, the conferencing and chat tools enable policy holders to communicate with us in their local language. In Hong Kong for example, policyholders can chat with us English, Cantonese or Mandarin. Similarly in Malaysia, they can chat with us in Malay and English. Customers can also upload documents in these languages as our machine learning technology has the ability to read and analyse this information. Not only does further comfort customers, it allows them to express more articulately their concerns and needs with our staff.

Ongoing recognition

Within just 17 months, we launched Solutions in a Box in May 2024. From day one, customer feedback was highly positive. During its first year, the solution’s net promoter score (NPS) of 45% was higher than what is deemed as an industry average. Our renewal rates with claimants are also high, thanks to Solutions in a Box, and currently stand at around 65%.

The technology doesn’t only benefit policy holders. Handlers including agents and brokers have benefited enormously from it as well. Being housed on a single platform, this allows handlers to easily access data proof points — by market and line, and through a single dashboard. This has proved to be invaluable when promoting QBE Asia’s claims experience to customers — something most insurers are unable to do. We combat fraudsters too, with detection in near-real time. This remains our secret recipe per se, and allows us stay focused on customers that need our attention.

Recognition isn’t limited to Asia. On presenting the solution to QBE’s leadership around the world, they were in awe of its seemingly futuristic capabilities. Rolling out a worldwide solution will allow us to scale globally through our internal modernisation program and leverage on the learnings we experience in Asia.

An award-winning solution — with more to come

The ongoing success of Solutions in a Box is ultimately the result of the people who worked on the project. It is one thing to have the technical abilities to build such a piece of technology, however without the commitment and ‘can-do’ culture of the many team members that were involved in its development, the technology would never have become the game-changing solution it is today.

Solutions in a Box has since gone on to win multiple awards. These include the “Hong Kong Business Technology Excellence Awards 2025: Automation – Insurance”, and the “Digital Insurance Awards APAC 2025: Insurer Leader of 2025 (APAC)”. The solution was also awarded the accolades of “Best Claims Management System” and “Excellence in Claims Service Management” at this year’s Global Insurance Innovation Awards by the Global Insurer.

Despite these, we’re not done yet. And will continue to upgrade the service. Stay tuned!