Geobear Grows Insurance Expertise with Greg Gladwell Appointment

Geobear, specialists in subsidence solutions, and ground remediation of buildings and infrastructure have bolstered their expertise in the insurance sector with the appointment of former Crawford CEO Greg Gladwell in an advisory role.

Over the past 18 months, the business has strengthened its service offering to the insurance market. They developed an innovative partnership with Legal and General and Sedgwick to reduce claim times in the home subsidence market – an achievement recognised with two notable insurance sector awards. 

Geobear CEO Otso Lahtinen is confident the innovation Geobear brings to the table will benefit the entire supply chain “I’m delighted Greg has joined us as a Senior Adviser, he knows every angle of the sector so will help us to make continual improvements to our processes and also help us to develop greater opportunities within other markets.”

Gladwell served as CEO for Crawford for a number of years before opening his own consultancy practice, “As has been illustrated, innovation and cross-partnering is a catalyst for improvement. With the clear benefits, our proposition has, I’m looking forward to helping accelerate their progress and efficiency that has already been achieved.”

Following Greg Gladwell’s appointment as a Senior Advisor, he talks to Geobear about his role and view on the future.

Biography

Greg Gladwell provides unique business insight being one of the few people to have successfully delivered in profile leadership roles on both the insurer and supplier sides of the insurance market.

Joining Aviva at the ground floor and working his way up to director level Greg experienced many varied senior leadership roles that embraced large operational, central service function and change programme management activities.

Seeking to experience more entrepreneurial and market facing challenge he progressed to lead 3 businesses in and around the claims management sector, the highest profile of these being as CEO UK & Ireland at Crawford & Company for 3.5 years.

Greg moved to a portfolio career providing a range of business catalyst services; mentoring support to leaders of tomorrow, consultancy, investment and advisory services to existing and start-up businesses. 

Why have you decided to be associated with Geobear? 

To help accelerate the progress in developing new partnerships and efficiency in the process using my experience, approach and knowledge.

How can you help accelerate the progress?

Have a lot of knowledge, experience in insurance claims sector, so covered every angle in the market, this gives me a lot of excellent connections and experience to act as an ambassador, the right thinking in how to help create the solutions.

How do you see Geobear adding value to domestic subsidence market?

Geobear can stabilise a subsiding property within 2 weeks of instruction, with work usually completed in one day, this is a huge benefit across the supply chain. It can offer a 75% reduction in the claims life cycle itself and also over 20% cost savings based on the 300+ cases settled to date.

Also, the lack of disruption to the customer is very significant. Geobear usually completes repairs in one day; not destroying the gardens in the process and its far more localised. Typically it takes number of days of extensive digging and damage of the surrounding area, and in many cases they require ppl to leave their houses and stay in the hotels for the period of time when the work is being carried out. Geobear is customer friendly.

Its very easy to use Geobear, the business has been operating for decades, there are a lot of case studies and good geographic worldwide backing, as you are present in many countries, and you come with a lot of credibility.

What are the core benefits for an insurer in a partnership with Geobear?

As a dynamic business you are quick in decision making to create the solutions the end customer requires. This results in less time required to complete remediation and ultimately cost savings through the supply chain.

Are there any other areas for improvement in the subs claims process?

The average for a repair is 15 months and geobear is reducing it by 75%. That it is still a lot of time for people to worry about their house that have cracks; is it structurally sound ? Am I safe to live in the house? Its biggest investment that people have, anything we can give them to have surety ,confidence and reduce worries and the time frame further by working with the people in the process.