Kennedys’ tech arm Kennedys IQ continues to build on its partnership with the University of Manchester, now offering clients the ability to apply machine learning to assess medical evidence and recommend a damages figure for insurance claims in the MoJ Portal.
The Portal Manager can be used for claims made through both the MoJ Portal and the new Official Injury Claim portal that is due to go live in May for road traffic accident injury claims valued at less than £5,000. Following a two-year project with the University of Manchester backed by the Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership, the Portal Manager also now employs fraud detection technology.
KennedysIQ says that the system is the first of its type to help compensators manage Road Traffic Accidents and Employers Liability/Public Liability claims from the moment they are submitted via the portal all the way through to a stage three damages hearing at the end and any recoveries, if necessary. In the majority of cases where lawyers would traditionally have been instructed, compensators are themselves empowered to resolve disputes within the system using this powerful solution, designed by lawyers.
Medical reports are machine read and each injury identified along with evidence of prognosis and recovery detail. We’re told that in cases where a pay out is due, the Portal Manager “calculates a compensation figure for each injury, based on Judicial College Guidelines, the client’s own compensation matrix and many years of Kennedys’ data and insight.”
Richard West, partner and head of the innovations group at Kennedys and a director of Kennedys IQ, says: “Portal Manager shows what can be achieved when deep legal experience and expertise is combined with cutting-edge technology – a solution that is designed to enable our clients to be more self-sufficient, reducing their reliance on lawyers for attritional claims.”
Mike Gilpin, Kennedys IQ’s commercial director, adds: “Our aim is to empower our clients with the ability to handle common legal tasks themselves, reducing legal costs and improving efficiency as well as outcomes. The management information the system provides enables compensators to manage their resources with greater accuracy.”
Elsewhere, DWF today (19 March) launched its latest insurance intelligence tool, Ivy, as part of a 30-month Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Alliance Manchester Business School.
Ivy draws on DWF’s historic data, based on previous settlements and strategies, to assess the recommended value of an insurance claim and tailor a case plan for how best to achieve an optimal outcome. This is shown through Ivy reducing the length of the claims lifecycles and the time it takes to reach a settlement, which generates savings for clients.
DWF partnered with Alliance Manchester Business School in the development of Ivy to help identify data features that could potentially support Ivy and define data logic, making it easier to eliminate incorrect data.
David Robinson, operations director for insurance at DWF, commented: “We all hear references to big data and the insights it can give us and this is a real example of a partnership between our people and data science expertise. Our partnership allowed us to shape a tool that will drive the best settlements for our clients and also return even further value so our clients can then go on to further shape their own strategies. This has been a hugely exciting project for DWF which will allow our people to do what they do best, deliver great outcomes for our clients.”
Dr Nadia Papamichail, senior lecturer in information and decision systems at Alliance MBS, and Knowledge Transfer Partnership supervisor, added: “The project contributed to DWF’s operational performance internally by improving claims handling efficiency and effectiveness while enhancing the company’s value proposition to clients externally.
“Project Ivy augmented lawyers’ abilities to make quicker and more accurate decisions by integrating current and historical data to optimise settlement cases both in terms of value and time. Most importantly, the benefits of utilising good quality data and shifting DWF towards a data-empowered culture are expected to be long-lasting”.
DWF’s partnership in the KTP scheme was part-funded by Innovate UK, a public body which aims to increase the UK’s economic strength and competitive edge by helping organisations gain access to skills and funding.
Caroline.hill@legalitlexicon.com