The Gold Mansfield Award for overall excellence in claims handling has been presented to Vero for a second straight year, while other winners were Allianz Australia, Zurich and NTI.

Vero also took out the SME Property and Casualty category at the online event, which was hosted by co-founders LMI Group.

“We’ve invested a lot of time over the past year on continuing to improve our claims management, building on a platform of fairness and transparency with our brokers and clients,” Vero Head of Commercial Property and Specialty Claims Luke Whenman said.

Vero has improved its OneTouch settlement rates and reduced the average duration of an SME claim and has built a major loss model that partners with specialist suppliers to help brokers and their clients navigate complex claims, he says.

The Personal Lines category was won by Allianz for the second year in a row, Corporate Property and Casualty was taken out by Zurich Insurance Australia and the Specialty award went to NTI.

Allianz Chief Customer and Operations Officer Brendan Dunne said Australians had faced a number of challenges in the past 18 months and the insurer had adapted and evolved in response to a rapidly changing environment, increasing competition and shifting customer and community expectations.

“We have made significant advancements in our claim handling process, spanning robust empathy training for our people to better support customers, especially those experiencing vulnerabilities, as well as investment towards our technology to streamline processes,” he said.

The awards, which are in their fifth year, are named after the English Lord Chief Justice who introduced the concept of utmost good faith to insurance – a concept that is written into Australian law.

The awards are sponsored by Steadfast and icare.