August 2024 update

Summer time

It’s peak holiday season so things are relatively quiet in the world of property claims this month. No doubt the weather will turn and we will all get very busy again, but until then we are enjoying the calm. This calm period is timely as we are getting ready to go live for a significant new client contract in September. All our suppliers and staff are being briefed and prepared for this new work which will mainly impact MA Assist suppliers and Virtus surveyors.

This month we bring news on the latest quarterly supplier awards and the final upgrade for our mobile surveying, validation and data collection app,  Scoper.

Supplier Awards quarter ended June 2024

We are delighted to announce our latest winners of the supplier awards for the quarter ended June 2024. It was a tough decision again as there are so many deserving suppliers on our UK-wide networks. But we finally chose this amazing bunch who have demonstrated excelllent customer service skills and are fully supportive of the MA Group‘s values and strategy.

Virtus Surveyor of the Quarter

The winner this quarter is Duncan Forrest. Duncan has been part of the Virtus team testing the new version of Scoper and has provided valuable positive feedback throughout the process. Duncan is a reliable, year-round surveyor for Virtus, who will always go out of his way to support Virtus whenever he can – during the surge at the start of 2024 Duncan travelled to Scotland from Cornwall for Virtus! Duncan is easy to contact, responsive and always positive.

Revival Branch of the Quarter

Well done to Revival Belfast for winning this quarter’s award.

Having qualified as a Revival Select branch Belfast has maintained an excellent 5 start status month on month. Their overall readings accuracy in TREVOR was 98% for the last quarter and they have NPS of 97. Cliff and the team are engaging and quick to respond to compliance requests – well done to everyone in Belfast.

MA Assist Supplier of the Quarter

Property Services SDS won last quarter and have done it again this quarter. They are engaged and doing some really good work and have had two cases where senior client staff have felt it appropriate to comment on their excellent performance.  They are helping out in other areas and are just generally back to their best.

Final Scoper update

We are excited to report that we have reached the end of the last phase of the Scoper upgrade which has added more functionality to the new v3 application. The changes that will be released next week in the latest Scoper update are as follows:

For Revival branches:

• New functionalty that allows technicians to create tasks for their office administrators to action, which improves communication and efficiency for all.

• An electric meter reading function has been added enabling readings to be easily captured and fed into the claims system from site at the start and end of the claim.
• An additional question to record whether reinstatement work will be required. This will smooth the triage of claims and enable us to forward claims to building contractors quickly.

For Virtus surveyors:

• A set of lifestyle questions has been added to help reinstatement contractors prepare for reinstatement works when the claim is passed over from Virtus. By being notified in advance of any vulnerabilities, access challenges or other complexities, building contractors will have more knowledge in advance to help them plan works.
• Staff can record on Pulse which building repair network the claim was assigned to.

For all:

• Configuration to manage which surveys create a PDF/Word report. This will allow reports with large numbers of photos to be submitted.
• Fully working information tabs with all the data fields specified displaying the relevant insurer briefing information, enabling suppliers to check policy rules and ethos for each insurer live on site.

• Taking additional photographs is now quicker and easier, improving efficiencies on site

Winning awards

We’re proud to announce that we took home the Business of the Year (50+ employees) Silver Award at the MK and Buckinghamshire SME Business Awards.

We’re over the moon to have been recognised for our outstanding work this past year – it reflects the achievements of not only our talented team, but our wider network too 💪

And we have the BDMA Young Achiever of the Year 2024 in our midst!

A huge congratulations to Jack Gibson of Revival Huddersfield who has been recognised by the BDMA for his outstanding contributions in his area of expertise.

The award was open to an individual aged 30 or under who makes good use of any available opportunities and is identified as a rising star within the industry. The individual clearly evidences their contribution to their organisation, and carries out business aligned activities external to their organisation.

Well done, Jack! Your dedication and willingness to help Revival is greatly appreciated and we’re so proud to call you one of ours!

MA Group MAD Awards

Our June winner was Peggy Havor, Quality and Resolver Officer. Peggy was given a special mention by the supply chain management at our largest client, following a conversation with claim handlers in the Peterborough office, as someone who was great to deal with and very helpful. She is providing an excellent service when it is often challenging to do so, especially when dealing with complaints.

And we had two winners in July:

Kris Lee, Claims Handler, received two nominations in the month. He received a call from Virtus’s largest client requesting assistance due to issues with another supplier. Kris, as always, was more than happy to assist and to expedite the claim for both the client and the insured. He offered to desktop the claim based on the images and quotes already obtained and in doing so he made sure that the claim was received, reviewed and closed in less than 24 hours!

We received an email from the Supply Chain team at the same client wanting to pass on compliments from their claim handlers. Kris has been able to support the client with his technical knowledge, keeping it simple and providing excellent communication

Caitlyn Murray, Claims Handler, has spent a fair amount of time unravelling a mess caused by the old (pre-acquisition) ways of working at Chem-Dry by checking and reconciling invoices and statements for an old ChemDry UK supplier. They all had to be checked and all invoices added up manually against the works completed, and then manual payments raised through the accounts team to correct the situation. Caitlyn then looked at all claims that had the supplier on and made sure that these were correct as well with clear notes ready for the files to close in the future. She demonstrated an excellent “can do, will do” attitude and attention to detail.

Well done to all the winners, and enjoy spending your gift vouchers.