Page 14 - Turkinsurance Digital Magazine

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Kocaeli, Trabzon, and Adana. There are no experts in other re- experts carry out their missions to protect the interests of both
maining cities of Turkey, since loss frequencies are so low that parties. This is the requirement that gave life to the profession
an expert cannot earn enough money to make a living. Major of expertise. During the initial years of Turkish Republic, a party
areas where insurance market requires the help of experts are was required to act as an arbitrator due to the discomfort creat-
insurance lines with high loss frequencies such as motor acci- ed by insurance companies that used to get their loss adjustment
dent, land vehicles, fire, theft and accident. We receive demands done by their own employees. These arbitrators are today’s in-
to organize experts’ examination on an annual basis, which is surance experts.
normally organized every 10 years. Our Association supports this
demand and works towards making it a reality. If we speak in “Major areas where insurance
terms of numbers; if all losses in Turkey were to be addressed by
experts, we would require double the number of existing experts. market requires the help of experts
However, only 30 percent of claims files in the insurance market are insurance lines with high loss
are addressed by experts. Therefore, even under current circum-
stances, existing experts do not receive sufficient amount of jobs. frequencies such as motor accident,
Share of experts in the industry decreased even further by 30 land vehicles, fire, theft and accident”
percent, following the foreign exchange crisis in July 2018, when
insurance companies began to engage in expertize file manage-
ment process themselves. We want claims operations in Turkey There are parties in today’s market that wish to keep experts out
to be managed by experts and more people to be engaged in the of the claims process. This is mainly due to the fact that exper-
process. We are still working to achieve this goal. tise fees are reflected as costs on the insurance. Since overall
benefit of an expert in a process can never be calculated, cost
What are the reasons behind the fact that experts receive is always an issue. But if we were able to calculate the costs of
fewer number of claims files in Turkish insurance industry? flaws of a process that continues without an expert, expert fees
would not be under the spotlights. So far, experts have produced
Insurance companies are on one side, and policyholders are on and monitored many projects for the insurance market. We have
the other. Expert is actually an element of balance. But, people also begun to digitalize those projects and processes. We hope to
in Turkey generally think of experts as the “experts of insur- digitalize all operational processes as soon as possible. After we
ance companies”. Yet, the law positions experts as independent complete this mission, transactions will be managed from a sin-
and objective parties. Thus, the most important contribution of gle center of operations. Experts will have removed a big part of
experts to the insurance market is the element of trust. They their processes from their workload by the help of digitalization.
are the first party to contact with policyholders following a loss. This will bring many benefits for the insurance market during
Policyholders who are in the dark about the processes, have to the process of detecting errors and optimizing processes to avoid
face giant insurance companies in case of a claim. At this point, them, while standardizing processes across the market. These