RBS INSURANCE AWARDS HOMESERVE CONTRACT

• Homeserve estimates that as many as 50% of insurance claims are inaccurately validated
• Homeserve’s Contents Validation Service saves insurance companies up to 30% on accurate product replacement on claims

22 May 2008, Homeserve, the home emergency service provider, announces that is has been awarded a three-year contract by RBS Insurance to manage the insurer’s contents validation hub for all claims made on high street commodities including electrical and electronic equipment.

The Homeserve service is expected to save insurers millions of pounds on product replacements each year, validating in excess of 150,000 claims per annum. Homeserve Contents Validation service provides insurers with a scientific approach to contents validation. Instead of the current industry practice of crudely comparing products by similar product groups, Homeserve’s system gives each product a brand weighted score that reflects the features of the product and the importance of those features. In effect, the service acts in the best interest of both Insurer and Customer by ensuring that the customer absolutely gets a fair & accurate settlement for their claim, at the lowest cost to the Insurer.

Rob Liley, Strategic Development Director, Homeserve comments: “This deal with RBS Insurance underlines the importance many of the major insurance brands now attach to accurate household contents validation. The over or under-compensation of customers can be commonplace across the insurance industry, with up to 50% of content claims being inaccurately validated

“As the insurance sector faces growing financial pressures to remove any unnecessary costs from household claims without compromising their service, we believe we have a robust solution that has the potential to save insurers up to 30% on contents claims by managing these through our integrated validation service and supply chain. Our solution also spells good news for our clients’ customers because they benefit from a greater choice of replacement products and an option of settlement methods such as cash, vouchers or like-for-like product.”

Supporting the service is Homeserve’s proprietary validation system, Valid8, which comprises a comprehensive database of consumer products sold in the UK in the last 10 to 15 years, from brown and white goods to bikes cameras and jewellery. Its custom-designed functionality is able to select the most cost-effective replacement for the product which is the subject of the claim from a panel of suppliers, ensuring that insurers can provide like-for-like replacement products for its customers at the lowest cost.

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About Homeserve

Every forty seconds a Homeserve engineer comes to the rescue of a British household.

With over 3,000 directly employed and sub-contracted engineers, Homeserve is a national emergency home repair service backed by a 24 hour claims handling and repair network.

Homeserve also offers insurance cover for plumbing, drains, electrical wiring and gas central heating. It has over 6.3 million policy members in the UK and a further 1.8 million in the USA, France and Spain.