Claim cycle time is paramount to successfully competing in the insurance industry—unfortunately, simple oversights can cause unintended delays. 

One such oversight involves prior payments. Prior to arbitration, the liability carrier may send a payment without an attempt to negotiate a settlement—the amount of the payment correlates to the liability opinion of this carrier. In these instances, since the payment was issued without securing a liability agreement between the carriers, the filing company will often cash the payment and pursue the balance in arbitration. When this happens, the filing company should acknowledge the cleared payment in its arbitration filing. 

Acknowledging a prior payment from the responding company will eliminate a post-decision amendment if the arbitrator errs on crediting the responding company’s alleged payment.

1. Look closely for the Feature Information workflow step. 
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page.
3. Look for Total Prior Payments Received.
4. Click “Add Prior Payment Received.”
5. Click “Attach Evidence” and attach proof that the responder’s payment has cleared the bank.