A claim is always a moment of stress. The damaged car, the flooded apartment, the stolen smartphone: the client wants reassurance, quickly. What they often get is a waiting time of 8 to 20 minutes, then a paper form, then a follow-up in 72 hours. Voice AI compresses this process to 3 minutes: complete declaration, acknowledgment of receipt, file number, next steps — all in a single automated interaction.
The traditional claims process and its flaws
In France, the average time between the occurrence of a claim and the opening of a file with the insurer is 18 hours. The main reason: policyholders first call in the evening or on weekends, when call centers are understaffed. They call back the next morning, wait, re-explain everything, and leave with a reference but without certainty about what comes next.
This delay has concrete consequences: for property damage (water damage, fire), each additional hour can worsen the damage. For insurers, it is also a window where evidence can disappear, complicating fraud analysis.
What the AI agent does in 3 minutes
As soon as the policyholder calls, the AI agent authenticates the identity (contract number + date of birth or postal code). It then engages in structured data collection:
- Nature of the claim (accident, theft, water damage, natural disaster...)
- Date and time of the incident
- Description of the damages
- Third parties involved (for auto claims)
- Urgency: is there an immediate danger? Need for emergency accommodation?
- Preliminary damage assessment
At the end of the call, the policyholder receives their file number and the list of documents to submit via SMS. The agent has already opened the file in the management system, scored the level of urgency, and triggered an alert for the expert if necessary.
Integrated fraud detection
Voice AI does not just collect information — it analyzes it in real-time. Vocal patterns (unusual hesitations, temporal inconsistencies, rephrasing in claims statements) can signal anomalies. Combined with file data (frequency of claims, declared value vs insured value, geographical consistency), this analysis produces a fraud risk score by the end of the call.
Files with high scores are automatically routed to the fraud team for human investigation. Others follow the standard circuit. This prioritization allows resources to be concentrated where they are needed, reducing the successful fraud rate by 15 to 25% depending on deployments.
Managing complex claims
For serious claims (natural disaster, industrial claim, death), the AI agent does not attempt to handle everything alone. It secures the situation, expresses calibrated empathy, collects emergency information, and immediately transfers to a human crisis team with a complete summary of the file. This structured handover prevents the client from having to re-explain everything in an already difficult moment.
"Our clients who reported a claim via the AI agent tell us they were surprised by the speed. Some thought they needed a human, but the agent handled their case better than they had hoped." — Customer Relations Manager, health and welfare insurer
Results after 12 months of deployment
On a panel of French and Belgian insurance companies that deployed Vocalis in 2025, the average results observed are:
- -67 % on the file opening time (from 18h to 6h on average)
- +38 points of NPS on the claims process
- -22 % in management cost per file
- -18 % in successful fraud rate (early detection)
- 92 % of files opened without human intervention in Phase 1