What is Colossus? And Who Uses Colossus or Other Computer Based Software to Evaluate Claims?
Colossus is the name of a computer software system that many of the larger insurance companies use to place settlement values on personal injury cases. Colossus was used by the Government Insurance Office of Australia in the 1980s and was popularized by Allstate Insurance Company in the 1990s. Allstate started using Colossus because they wanted to standardize and simplify the values their adjusters placed on personal injury claims. Allstate also initially liked Colossus because it had the reputation for reducing the amount off money paid on settlements. By using Colossus, Allstate learned that most plaintiff's lawyers - and Colossus identifies those lawyers - will not file a lawsuit in most cases and are willing to settle for the best offer that they can get from the adjuster.
Colossus takes a number of factors into consideration before ever looking at your individual case and injuries. Colossus considers whether your attorneys have a record of taking their cases to court if they get an inferior offer or whether they always just take the best offer given by the insurance company. It considers the geographic area where the claim arises. It considers the mean jury verdict in the prior 12 months in the county where the claim occurred.
Colossus does provide consistent estimates of injury costs. But Insurance company claims adjusters have varying degrees of knowledge and experience, and this leads to varying judgments in the value of claims. Colossus avoids this problems by doing a "calculation" to attribute "severity points" to claims. Injuries have an injury profile that assigns a base severity rating, which is the starting point in the personal injury claim evaluation process. After giving consideration to the personal injury attorneys involved and the state and county where the claim occurred, the computer system then counts up the severity points and converts them to a dollar value. For some insurance companies, like Allstate, this is the most money they will ever offer to pay to settle a claim.
By using Colossus, insurance companies will try to decrease the value of your claim, and will not take into consideration the anxiety, stress, pain, inconvenience, hassle, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of consortium (relationship), inability to participate in the things that you enjoy most, or any number of other things that a judge or jury would certainly take into consideration when trying to decide a fair amount of compensation owed to an injured person.
Truck and auto accident attorney Brian Davis is aware that the following insurance companies are licensed to use Colossus to evaluate North Carolina personal injury claims:
- Aetna
- Allstate
- American Family Mutual Insurance
- American National Property and Casualty
- Arrow Claims Management
- CNA
- Explorer Insurance Company
- Erie Insurance
- Farmers Insurance
- Federated Insurance Group
- General Casualty Insurance Company
- Great American Insurance Company
- Grange Mutual Casualty
- Keystone Insurance
- Metropolitan Group
- Motorist Mutual
- Ohio Casualty
- The Hartford
- MetLife Home and Auto
- State Auto
- Travelers Property Casualty Insurance
- USAA
- Utica
- Zurich
Each insurance company uses Colossus differently in valuing North Carolina personal injury cases. The adjusters from these insurance companies that use Colossus contend that Colossus is just one factor in the evaluation process. We believe that the weight given to the value determined by Colossus varies from company to company and from adjuster to adjuster. More experienced adjusters who evaluate the more serious injury claims seem to have more latitude and discretion about the value to be placed on a particular case. Less experienced adjusters have less discretion and are more apt to rely solely on Colossus for their valuation. Allstate seems to rely on the Colossus results more than other insurance companies.
At Davis Law Group, we understand the different types of data that Colossus considers when generating a case value. We continually strive to help adjusters input information into the Colossus system that we know will maximize the insurance company's evaluation of our client's case.
