The motor insurance market has never had access to more data.
Claims handlers operate sophisticated management systems. Fraud teams deploy increasingly powerful analytical tools. Investigators draw on intelligence sources that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. The industry has invested heavily in technology, in talent, and in process – and the results are visible across almost every stage of the claims lifecycle.
Because, despite these advances, claims leakage, indemnity spend and credit hire exposure remain stubbornly persistent. And that raises a question the industry rarely asks directly: if we have more information than ever before, why do we still so often identify critical issues after significant costs have already been incurred?
The answer, I would suggest, has less to do with what insurers know and more to do with when they know it.
The Trajectory Problem
Most motor claims follow a familiar path.
A claim is notified. Initial information is gathered. Reserves are set. A liability position begins to form. Fraud indicators may or may not surface. Credit hire exposure starts to develop. Recovery opportunities are considered, or not considered. Customer expectations and third-party positions begin to solidify.
All of this happens fast. And that’s entirely understandable. Claims teams operate under real and sustained pressure: service levels, cycle times, regulatory obligations. The imperative to move claims forward is not unreasonable.
But here’s the uncomfortable reality.
Within the first few days of a claim, its trajectory is often already being determined, and many of the most consequential decisions within that trajectory are being made before sufficient intelligence has been gathered to fully understand the risks.
The industry has become exceptionally good at processing claims quickly. The question worth asking is whether it has become equally good at understanding them quickly.
The Cost of Knowing Too Late
Consider how many claims ultimately reveal important information weeks or months after notification.
A policy issue that was not initially apparent. A liability opportunity that was present from the outset but went unrecognised. A witness account or CCTV footage that fundamentally changes the picture. Evidence suggesting a claimant’s account does not withstand scrutiny. A credit hire exposure that could have been contained, had it been identified earlier.
These situations are not unusual. Claims professionals encounter them regularly.
The challenge is not that insurers fail to identify these matters. It is that they so often identify them after the point at which they could have had the greatest impact.
By the time they surface, positions have become entrenched. Costs have accumulated. Third parties have organised. Intervention opportunities – which were real and available in the early days – have closed. What might have been addressed for a modest outlay now requires a much more costly and contested response.
Timing is not a marginal factor in claims outcomes. In many cases, it is the defining one.
The View From the Defence Desk
The consequences of late intelligence are not felt by insurers alone.
Defence solicitors instructed on contested motor claims face a challenge that is rarely discussed openly but is well understood within the industry. By the time a file lands on a defence lawyer’s desk, the claim has frequently been in motion for weeks or months. Positions have hardened. The claimant’s account has been refined and rehearsed. Third-party representatives are organised and prepared.
And the solicitor is expected to mount a credible defence, often on the basis of whatever evidence happens to have survived.
CCTV footage has been overwritten. Scene conditions have changed. Witnesses are harder to locate, and their recollections are less reliable. The window for capturing contemporaneous evidence, the kind that actually moves a case, has long since closed.
This is not a criticism of defence lawyers. It is a structural problem with the information environment in which they are asked to operate. Talented, experienced solicitors find themselves not building a defence from a position of strength, but reconstructing one from fragments, starting, in effect, from the beginning.
The downstream consequences are predictable. Cases that might have been defensible become difficult. Disputes that might have been resolved efficiently become protracted. Legal costs rise not because of poor lawyering, but because the raw material for a credible defence simply was not captured when it was available.
Earlier intelligence changes this equation materially. A contemporaneous account. Documented behavioural indicators. Scene evidence captured promptly. These are not luxuries; they are the foundations on which a defence is built. When they exist, a solicitor has something to work with. When they do not, the insurer is funding a defence that begins at a significant disadvantage.
The cost of that disadvantage rarely appears as a line item. But it is real, and it is avoidable.
The Gap Nobody Talks About
The industry has long focused on two key stages of the claims lifecycle.
The first is FNOL or ENOL. Designed to capture initial information efficiently and commence the claims journey. The second is investigation, a deeper examination of concerns once they have been identified and referred.
Both are essential. Both perform distinct and valuable functions.
What is less frequently discussed is the period between them.
This is the window, often spanning the first few days to a couple of weeks, where decisions are actively being made, but where structured intelligence gathering is typically limited. It is a period that receives relatively little systematic attention, yet it is arguably where the outcome of a claim is most susceptible to influence.
Because it’s during this window that liability assumptions crystallise. That credit hire exposure begins to accumulate. That fraud indicators are at their most diagnostic. That indemnity concerns first emerge. And that intervention, if it is to happen at all, is at its most effective and its most affordable.
The quality of intelligence available during this stage has a disproportionate impact on the ultimate cost of the claim. Yet it remains, for many insurers, a structurally underserved part of the process.
Earlier Intelligence, Not More Investigation
The instinctive response to claims leakage is often more investigation. More resource deployed further into the lifecycle, examining claims that have already developed their own momentum.
There is a different question worth asking.
What if the opportunity is not later investigation but earlier intelligence?
Not for every claim. Not as a replacement for claims handling or for formal investigation. But as a structured, proportionate assessment process designed to identify risks, opportunities and intervention points before costs become embedded and positions become fixed.
Such an approach would give claims teams meaningful visibility, at the point where it still matters, of potential indemnity concerns, liability issues, developing fraud indicators, credit hire risks and evidential weaknesses.
The objective is not to add complexity to the claims process. It is to change the timing of understanding.
Why Timing Is the Real Opportunity
The industry has invested heavily in efficiency. It has invested heavily in analytics and fraud detection. It has invested in technology that allows it to process claims faster and with greater consistency than ever before.
These are genuinely important advances. But efficiency at processing claims is not the same as intelligence at the point when decisions are made.
The most valuable intelligence in any claim is not the intelligence obtained eventually. It is the intelligence obtained early enough to actually change the outcome.
That’s where the next meaningful opportunity lies – not in knowing more, but in knowing sooner.
©2026 DLB Investigations Ltd.
DLB Investigations provides early claims intelligence services to motor insurers through RTC helping claims teams make better-informed decisions from the earliest stage of the claims lifecycle. If this resonates with challenges your team is navigating, I’d welcome a conversation.
David Booker M.A
