Kathmandu. The government has developed an ‘Automatic Surveyor Deputation System’ to automate the process of assigning surveyors for the assessment of damage of insurance claims. The Insurance Authority of Nepal has already tested it from Monday.

The system has been developed with the aim of automating the process of assigning surveyors based on good governance. Regarding the new automated system, 36 people, including the IT head and claims head of the non-life insurance company, will be trained online. After that, the surveyor will also be trained on the automated system. Similarly, there is a plan to include reinsurance companies in this system.

The system has been developed with the aim of making the selection of surveyors transparent on the basis of the surveyor’s expertise, availability, geographical location, seniority, and portfolio. It is believed that the development of this system will be important in the context of complaints that the selection of surveyors is not scientific and transparent, and that the same surveyor gets more and less work.

At present, there is a provision that individual surveyors can do up to five jobs and institutional surveyors can do up to 10 jobs, but it is difficult to keep an effective data of their work. At present, the data of 680 surveyors, including 88 institutional and the rest individual, has been entered into this system.

Similarly, there have been complaints that insurance companies are giving work only to surveyors of their choice. Improving this situation, the authority has started the development of an automated system with the aim of maintaining transparency, equal opportunity and accountability in the process of appointing surveyors.

At present, the profile of all the surveyors has been prepared in the new system and their expertise, seniority, availability, geographical location, portfolio and previous work has been done. After registering an insurance claim in the system, the system will decide which surveyor is suitable for the related ‘case’ on the basis of the prescribed criteria.

For example, if there is a claim related to a vehicle accident, the system will select a suitable surveyor from among the surveyors who have expertise in the subject, are available in the relevant position, have the required seniority and can take the job immediately. This will reduce the need for insurance company officials to manually select a surveyor every time and the process of assigning a surveyor will be automated.

During the development of the system, suggestions were taken in consultation with various stakeholders including the Chief Executive Officer of the insurance company, Surveyor, Insurance Surveyor, Claim Chief and IT Chief. After this, the work of software development was started by preparing the basis and parameters of the selection of the surveyor.

At present, insurance companies are providing their surveyor details to the authority in the system. After the system is operational, its performance and stability will be closely monitored for some time. The authority has said that security tests including firewalls, VAPTP will be conducted.

The new system will automatically select the surveyor on the basis of the specified criteria. This will help in identifying and controlling the situation of giving the same surveyor work again and again or not giving enough opportunities to other surveyors. The system will also be able to track the details of how much work the surveyor has received, what work has been completed and whether he is in a position to take up a new job.

This system will also reduce the time and cost of the insurance claim process. In some cases, it will be easier to resolve problems related to the selection of surveyors, re-evaluation, delay in the claim process, or dispute with the customer.

Since the system selects the appropriate surveyor according to the incident, such problems will be reduced and time and cost will be saved. Also, the system will have the details of which surveyor was selected on what basis, which will increase the transparency and accountability of the decision-making process.

With the development of the system, a large amount of data will be collected on surveying in the long run. This will help in formulating policies related to this. Also, the service delivery provided by the surveyor and what kind of services received by the service recipients can also be studied.