Transform Claims with Responsible, AI-Powered Conversational FNOL™

Nearly 70 percent of people who recently filed a claim say their First Notice of Loss (FNOL) experience impacted their overall claim satisfaction, but today’s intake solutions create inefficiencies and frustration. During a recent webinar, Hi Marley’s Joe Urban, Director of Solutions and Consulting, and Alex Burgess, Principal Industry Strategist, explored Hi Marley’s new Conversational FNOL solution and how it breaks through some of the industry’s biggest challenges related to FNOL and simplifies the claim intake process, enabling one unified conversation from FNOL all the way to claim closure.

“When you talk about FNOL being the front door to the claim, it’s the first chance that an insurer gets to set expectations,” said Joe. “It’s the customer’s first impression, really, after buying a policy.”

“FNOL is a tremendously important part of the end-to-end claim experience,” said Alex. “And today, oftentimes, the FNOL experience gets siloed from the rest of that claim conversation. So, Conversational FNOL was about creating a lovable experience for policyholders and adjusters by enabling a truly end-to-end claim conversation that persists throughout. So, any adjuster can jump in, get the full context of the conversation, and treat the policyholder with empathy.”

The Challenge with Digital FNOL Adoption

The P&C insurance industry started implementing digital FNOL solutions over the last decade. Once carriers began building out online accounts, creating a digital option for filing claims made sense. However, in Hi Marley’s survey of 800 policyholders who recently submitted claims, 51 percent reported FNOL over the phone. At the same time, only about 20 percent reported their claim through a digital FNOL channel.

“We’ve seen carriers hit a wall as they try to push digital FNOL channels,” said Joe. “For a lot of customers, if they have a claim, the first thing they might do is look for their insurance card, and it’s got a phone number on it, so they call it. Customers are used to operating over the phone.”

“For some areas of customer interaction—like a bank balance inquiry or returning something you bought online— companies can digitize them almost completely and can expect to get over 90% of people doing those things digitally,” said Alex. “But FNOL is different. When you think about the customer’s circumstances and the gravity of reporting a claim, they want to explain what happened to them so the carrier can get it right, help them resolve the claim, and provide much-needed support. It’s different from a transactional activity, so we should treat it differently.”

Conversational FNOL Reimagines Intake

While digital FNOL solutions are a cost-effective way to meet the needs of digital-first customers, if customers aren’t going to the website or app first to report their claim, carriers struggle with digital FNOL adoption; it requires a lot of ongoing promotion. Some carriers will put an option in their IVR to hang up the phone and file online, but it’s often too late at that point—it’s hard to make a behavior change at the key moment of truth.

“With Conversational FNOL, we’re meeting the policyholder, where they are, on the phone, and still achieving the benefit of automated intake,” said Alex. “Traditional electronic FNOL doesn’t have to be the place to start. It can take years and years to grow penetration, but Conversational FNOL provides a faster way to get significant automated intake gains overnight.”

Here’s how Conversational FNOL Works:

1. Call to Carrier – Customers call their carrier to report an incident.
2. Tell the Story – A recording prompts the policyholder to verbally tell their uninterrupted story.
3. Call-to-Text Transfer – Hi Marley records and transcribes the story, then initiates texting.
4. Image Collection – Policyholders text in photos, videos and other media of the incident.
5. Story and Photo Analysis – AI extracts relevant FNOL data needed for claim creation.
6. Follow-Up and Verification – Missing information is gathered via text, starting with a policy verification.
7. FNOL Completion and Claim Creation – A claim is automatically created in the carrier’s claims system.
8. First Contact and Beyond – The assigned adjuster promptly jumps into the existing, trusted text thread for further claims communication.

“When people file a claim, it’s usually their first experience,” said Joe. “They don’t always know what to do, so naturally, they will pick up the phone and call. It’s what’s familiar, that’s why Conversational FNOL makes a lot of sense; it’s an opportunity for the customer to accelerate the claims filing process without moving to a new channel.”

Conversational FNOL Uses AI Responsibly

Conversational FNOL uses AI to analyze the customer’s story and extract and structure the data needed for claim creation.

“Everybody wants to find ways to employ AI to drive efficiency,” said Alex. “And FNOL intake is the key moment of truth we want to get right. And so, using AI had to be done in a very deliberate way. With conversational FNOL, we have deployed what we call responsible AI.”

Responsible AI consists of a couple of components. First, Hi Marley only uses AI to ingest, interpret, and structure policyholders’ speech and text. The AI model never generates text or speech directly to the policyholder, so there’s no chance of any hallucination happening to the customer.

“We feel very strongly about that,” said Alex. “FNOL is not the place to start in terms of full-on chatbots talking with your customers. We don’t think the technology is there, and from talking to our customers, they’re not there. Very few are looking for that type of experience. Our solution delivers a high completion rate, so if there were extra benefits of trying to deploy a full AI solution, that would be one thing, but we don’t believe there are, so why take the risk?”

Conversational FNOL Prioritizes Accuracy

The second component of responsible AI is playing back all of the information collected from the policyholder in a summary text and asking the customer to confirm the accuracy twice during FNOL.

“We very much care about accuracy at FNOL and take it seriously,” said Alex. “And so we have designed the experience to provide the maximum accuracy possible.”

With Hi Marley’s responsible AI solution, built for P&C insurance, carriers define the type of questions and their specific wording to surface to policyholders via text during intake.

“CNFOL leverages AI behind the scenes to get the specific information the carrier needs and ensure high-level accuracy,” said Joe. “But also, by deploying responsible AI, we avoid any reputational risk of a rogue AI talking to an end customer.”

“Humans are not perfect, and we make mistakes,” said Alex. “Call center reps might have typos, they might enter a value just to get past a field, or they might make an assumption that ends up not being right because they’re on autopilot. With Conversational FNOL, a lot of standardization eliminates some of those types of errors.”

Conversational FNOL Lowers Costs, Streamlines Claims and Improves Satisfaction

Early adopters of Conversational FNOL are already experiencing benefits from the solution.

Not only have policyholders rated Conversational FNOL nine out of ten for ease of experience, but adjusters also love the product.

“Depending on the use case, early results show that in 50-80 percent of claims reported with Conversational FNOL, policyholders provide photos and videos of the damage,” said Joe. “From a claims handling perspective, this helps provide more details and gives adjusters the full story early on.”

Carriers also see between 20-25 percent call deflection for auto and property claims.

“Call deflection is a very easy way to quantify ROI,” said Alex. “So that’s an immediate call reduction at your call center. Or if you have a third party, not paying that third party for those claims. The price carriers pay for completed Conversational FNOL claims is far less than paying a human for intake.”

Alex continued, “We started Conversational FNOL to create a more lovable FNOL experience. We’re proud of the results today and most proud of the team for delivering something that enhances policyholder satisfaction. We can’t wait to get it in the hands of more people.”

Click here to watch the complete webinar, including an exclusive insider look at the Conversational FNOL demo!