Why better claims outcomes depend on a connected property ecosystem

In this contributed article, Aaron Cole, Vice President, International Claims, Cotality explores how property claims outcomes rely on connected solutions and how they need to be created together.

A property claim is the moment a policyholder discovers what their insurer is really made of. It is also the moment our industry’s fragmentation becomes most visible.

The numbers tell the story. UK property payouts reached a record £6.1bn in 2025, with £1.2bn driven by severe weather. Rising labour and material costs, climate volatility, a shifting regulatory environment and AI technology disruption mean that pressure will not ease.

But the more uncomfortable figures sit with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). Supplier handoffs and friction contribute towards claim delays that account for 23% of all building insurance complaints, and 38% of buildings insurance complaints were upheld in 2025/26 – against 30% across other financial products.

That gap is not a failure of effort or intent. The UK’s property industry is full of resilient, innovative leaders who want the best for policyholders and their industry. It is a failure of connection: too many claims still pass through disconnected systems, departments, and organisations, shedding time, data, and goodwill at every handoff.

The handoff problem

Every property claim is a relay. Insurer, loss adjuster, restorer, repairer – each holds part of the picture, and information can fall through the gaps at every transition. Too often, it is the policyholder who ends up project managing their own claim – chasing updates, repeating their story, coordinating appointments. That burden should never sit with them.

We know what good looks like. When claim data flows through a connected supply chain, handovers are efficient and work is coordinated – reducing friction for suppliers and policyholders alike. Reinstatement timelines shorten, hidden operational capacity is unlocked, and the policyholder tells a very different story about their claim.

Integration must run deep and wide

Technology is making that flow possible. Advances in AI and cognitive imagery are maturing rapidly, pointing to a future where property damage can be translated into structured, itemised scopes priced at current, independent market rates – cutting triage times and the manual back-and-forth that slows settlement.

But point solutions are not enough. Integration has to run deep – embedded in the workflows where decisions are actually made – and wide, connecting insurers, suppliers, and contractors around a shared view of each property. Only then can we automate the routine stages of a claim end to end, freeing our experts to focus on judgement, empathy, and the fair human outcomes Consumer Duty demands.

One property, one picture

The same logic holds beyond insurance. Social housing providers spent a record £10bn on repairs in 2024/25, with £50bn of investment projected over the next five years. Where repair and retrofit programmes share data, works can be coordinated in a single visit – and bringing remaining social homes up to EPC Band C would cut domestic heat loss by around 42% and save residents over £700m a year in energy costs.

It also benefits the housing providers themselves. We’ve found by automating the alignment of retrofit and resilience works with restoration, repairs and maintenance, landlords can save up to 18% on investment plans. Different sectors, same lesson: connected data delivers better outcomes for the people who depend on us.

Beyond our boundaries

This is the thinking behind Cotality’s vision of Intelligence Beyond Bounds – dismantling the barriers between legacy systems, departments, and entire sectors so that property insight flows to every decision-maker who needs it. When data moves consistently across the claims journey, we replace frustration and variation with consistency and trust – and policyholders receive the service and settlements they deserve.

No single organisation can build that alone. The claims experience of the next decade will be shaped by the connections we build now. I would rather we shape them together.

To find out more, Cotality is hosting INTRConnect Europe 2026 on Tuesday 29 September, at The Vox, Birmingham – uniting, for the first time, the UK’s major insurers and the insurance supply chain with energy retrofit contractors, housing associations, the private rental sector, and social housing leaders.