National law firm Weightmans has invested a six-figure sum to acquire the IP of a tool developed by its own innovation and data science teams in partnership with Frontier Labs, funded by a six-figure £165,874 grant from Innovate UK back in 2019.
The product, currently known as MatterLab, leverages historic data to increase the accuracy with which Weightmans predicts the value of claims under £100,000 – a prediction that dictates how much insurance clients will have to keep in reserve.
Under initial closed pilots, the tool was shown to boost the accuracy of reserve predictions by 20%, significantly reducing the amount of over and under-reserving on an individual case by case basis.
Now that Weightmans has purchased the IP to MatterLab, it says that it is progressing live pilots, the first phase of which is due to conclude at the end of April 2022.
The acquisition follows the launch of PREDiCT Large Loss, developed by Weightmans’ in-house data scientists, which uses similar methodology but what is described as “a far more granular data set” to support large loss claims handlers in reserve calculations (it uses data from Thomson Reuters MatterSphere). Its pilot testing delivered a 71% improvement in reserving accuracy, representing a global average reserve reduction of £285,000 per case. We did an extensive interview with Weightmans partner Will Quinn about PREDiCT and you can read that here: https://legaltechnology.com/2021/11/22/interview-new-weightmans-data-analytics-tool-saves-average-of-285k-per-case/
Quinn said of the new MatterLab tool: “Reserving is one of the most business-critical stages when handling personal injury claims – it can impact everything from loss forecast estimates, insurers’ solvency and customers’ reinsurance premiums. The challenge is that reserving often takes place in a knowledge vacuum, with individual case handlers often having to work with minimal detail and only their previous experience to draw on.
“We knew that AI-enabled technology and predictive analytics tools were key to complementing the capabilities of case handlers, ensuring they have as much data as possible at their fingertips to boost the accuracy of their calculations. This investment represents our commitment to augmenting the specialist skills of handlers to help them provide the most accurate, insight-driven results for clients.”
Stuart Whittle, business services and innovation director, said: “Using data-led insights to transform our claims handling capabilities is key to our service delivery by helping our clients manage their financial liabilities and drive down overall indemnity spend.”