Three months into 2025, risk managers face an increasingly complex landscape where financial responsibility must be carefully balanced with brand integrity, employee well-being, and operational efficiency. From managing workers’ compensation and liability claims to leveraging artificial intelligence for smarter decision-making, risk leaders must adapt to new challenges while seizing emerging opportunities. Joe Zinga, EVP — Risk Management, highlights the benefits of a strategic partnership for navigating the year ahead. By harnessing data-driven insights, AI-powered tools, and a commitment to service excellence, Gallagher Bassett (GB) helps risk managers drive better outcomes for their organizations.

1. What are the key areas of opportunities you see for risk managers as they look to help their business in 2025? 

Today’s risk managers face the competing priorities of balancing financial responsibilities with representing their organization’s values by empathetically managing workers’ compensation (WC) losses and positively portraying the brand in liability losses.

One opportunity specific to WC is understanding that a client’s workforce is their most valuable asset. Risk managers seek innovative ways to help injured workers recover and return to work, which not only retains valuable talent but also boosts employee morale. For this reason, their claims and risk administration partner must embrace this mindset by developing processes and solutions that support it.

At GB, this includes an increased level of engagement with injured workers through Resolution Managers (RM) and Clinical team members at the onset of the claim. A critical element includes applying a focused and balanced manner that does not cause financial leakage for the organization. Understanding the lifecycle of a claim at the most granular level enables GB to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) such as machine learning and generative AI more effectively to empower our team members to make better, faster decisions, ultimately achieving superior human and financial outcomes.

For liability, the balance for risk managers between financial and brand representation is a challenging one. Often, less than 5% of annual claim volumes drive over 60% of the total incurred values. Conversely, it is often the lowest dollar value losses that can drive dissatisfaction in the form of complaints. GB can help risk managers turn this challenge into opportunity by leveraging complexity scoring at the onset and throughout the life of the claim to segment our claims handling and guide the loss to the best possible claims handling resource.

By effectively segmenting losses within our Liability team, we route high-cost and high-complexity losses to an experienced, tenured RM that focuses on large, complex losses and has the skill and experience to drive that file to the best possible resolution. We supplement those resources with sophisticated AI tools such as our liability claim analysis dashboard, supporting these experienced resources with “like-kind” data points that predict ultimate costs and enable effective decision-making.

Finally, GB leverages innovative offerings such as GB’s Auto Concierge and Direct Repair Network, improving customer satisfaction and reducing cycle times on low-complexity losses.

2. How is GB leveraging AI to enhance its claims and risk management capabilities whilst maintaining customer service excellence and consistently delivering superior outcomes?

At GB, we recognize the importance of aligning AI investments with the guiding principles of our organization. Our mission is to help people and companies prevent, manage, and overcome the impact of risk. We are keenly aware of the fact that it is our front-line claims professionals who bring that mission to life each day, and we focus our time and resources related to AI on enabling those team members accordingly. Tools such as Claim Summarizer, Document Insights, and E-Mail Sentry were created on Gallagher-specific AI platforms and informed by GB data and intellectual property to assist GB claim professionals in focusing their time and energy on high-leverage tasks. By taking time-consuming, low-complexity tasks off the desk of our claim professionals, we free up time for claimant interaction and other high-leverage tasks that will continue to improve claimant experience and claim outcomes.

Beyond assisting GB claim professionals, GB is leveraging AI to further enhance our industry-leading RMIS platform, Luminos. We have introduced the Universal Search function, which allows Luminos users to search by “aspects” of a claim, alongside traditional search elements. GB clients and broker partners can specify the type of dashboard or report they need, and the system will retrieve all relevant reports. This functionality also extends to single-word searches, where the system identifies all claims containing that word in the description of loss, such as “ladder” claims. We are continually advancing AI capabilities to integrate “internet search” functionality into the Luminos platform so that our clients and partners can focus on strategy after obtaining the necessary data, rather than spending time mining it.

3. What are the key challenges risk managers are facing in terms of managing total cost of risk?

Managing total cost of risk is an ever-evolving challenge, and risk managers must be able to rely on their claims and risk management partner for support across a variety of areas. Examples of these challenges include:

Economic Headwinds – Whether it is rising costs related to liability, specifically auto liability, rising jury verdicts, medical inflation, or other obstacles, risk managers are tasked with solving financial challenges that can be daunting. GB has expanded and enhanced our capabilities in recent years to assist our partners in attacking these challenges head-on:

• GB Specialty: Our team is uniquely positioned to manage the most complex liability exposures. Specific to auto liability, our Major Case Unit has been proven to reduce claim costs on high-complexity losses by over 40%. The GB Specialty team is a tenured group of experienced industry professionals with the expertise to handle medical malpractice, cyber, product and life science liability, employment practices liability, and more.
• GBCARE: GB has consistently expanded our capabilities related to medical management to include building an industry-leading clinical team of over 850 professionals. We also introduced Clinical Concierge, our offering that provides a focused clinical assignment that reduces lost workdays, increases closure rates, and reduces litigation.
  
  

Litigation Management – Risk managers are increasingly seeking ways to reduce the number of litigated cases and manage the costs of those that do go to litigation. GB has taken important steps to assist in minimizing litigated files through our Litigation Avoidance tool, which not only identifies but also outlines why files may become litigated for RMs and what steps should be taken to prevent that. Beyond that, GB offers our GB LegalSuite, which helps to evaluate the effectiveness of attorneys who are handling litigated cases.

Actionable Stewardship – There is a wealth of data available to risk managers today, but the challenge lies in how to effectively use it. Risk managers should expect a partner that proactively provides credible data in a way that enables actions that reduce total cost of risk. Such partners should be able to accurately quantify the baseline, adjust the data for factors such as state mix and complexity, and intentionally plan initiatives. Equally important is having confidence in the data’s results and the ability to track and monitor the progress of these initiatives, allowing risk managers to remain agile and adapt as needed.

4. What types of things does GB prioritize when building partnerships with clients?

When building a successful long-term partnership, I believe the first step is developing trust and credibility between GB and our clients. After 25 years at GB, I am continually inspired by how genuinely our people care about doing things right. We prioritize what is best for the client and their employees and customers, regardless of whether anyone is watching. This commitment defines our integrity, and while it may be difficult to capture in a report, it is evident and serves as the foundation of a successful long-term relationship.

From there, our goal is to deliver service excellence day in and day out while simultaneously driving superior financial results. GB has a proven track record of delivering best-in-class outcomes for our clients, and that starts by being an engaged partner and understanding our client’s short- and long-term goals. Once these goals are confirmed, we identify areas of opportunity, develop and align on a plan, and then execute that plan to drive results. We are never complacent; this process is ongoing, as we are always looking for opportunities for program improvement.

Finally, success lies in doing the small things right, such as the day-to-day blocking and tackling, returning phone calls, performing high-quality claims and risk management services, and actively engaging with our Client Service team to clearly and proactively demonstrate our quality work. It is true that AI, innovation, and other exciting new developments grab the headlines, and deservedly so, but long-term success is built on the hard work that happens every day.  In this business, being good is commendable, but being consistently good is great—and that is our focus at GB, which sets us apart from the competition.

If you’re a risk manager looking to turn challenges into opportunities, contact our team to find out how a partnership with us can help you adapt and thrive in 2025.