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Digital EditionSeven Questions for CorVel’s CJ Cypcar
Risk & Insurance recently caught up with CJ Cypcar, SVP of Product Development at CorVel. What follows is a transcript of that discussion, edited for length and clarity.
Risk & Insurance: CorVel’s recent survey of Risk Professionals found that 65% of respondents believe AI and automation will drive the greatest change in claims over the next five years, while many continue to prioritize operational fundamentals like speed, communication, and return to work. What does that balance tell you about where the industry is heading?
CJ Cypcar: What’s interesting is that the industry isn’t choosing between technology and the fundamentals. Technology is becoming how we execute those fundamentals better.
Claims professionals are managing more information and complexity than ever before. Claim severity is still on the rise, and the challenge isn’t access to data anymore. It’s identifying within the data what matters, what’s changed, and what should happen next.
That’s where technology and AI come into play. AI can help connect and prioritize signals across medical information, claim activity, return to work, and other inputs, which allows claims professionals to focus their expertise on the decisions that require it.
AI will ultimately change how claims work gets done, but the fundamentals will define whether it’s successful.
R&I: Recent findings reveal that AI is viewed as both an opportunity and a potential risk, with concerns around governance, privacy, and data authenticity emerging as significant challenges. How should organizations approach AI adoption in a way that builds confidence rather than uncertainty?
CJC: The biggest piece in that is confidence, which starts with being intentional about where and how AI is used. The question shouldn’t be what can we automate, but where can AI improve the process while maintaining the right controls and accountability.
Governance has to be part of the beginning and part of the design. Validation, security, and privacy need to be part of the solution, not controls added after the technology is deployed. Human judgment remains critical — AI can surface information, connect patterns, and help identify what deserves attention, but ultimately, experienced professionals provide context and make the decisions where judgment is required.
Another big piece is trust. People have to understand what the technology is telling them, where that information comes from, and where their judgment is required. Without trust, you’re not going to gain adoption or successfully integrate AI into everyday workflows.
Strong governance doesn’t slow innovation. It creates the confidence to scale responsibly.
R&I: Nearly half of your survey respondents identified adjuster workload and staffing as the biggest barriers to improving claim outcomes. Where is technology making the greatest impact in helping claims professionals work more effectively while maintaining a human-centered approach?
CJC: The workflow finding is interesting because it tells us that technology has to solve a problem we have in the industry, which is capacity. Claims professionals manage significant volumes of unstructured data, including documentation, communication, and medical information, and technology can reduce the time they spend finding and organizing it.
Instead of spending hours searching across a claim to determine what’s changed or where attention is needed, technology can help through summarizing and prioritization. It’s not just automation. It’s returning capacity to the claims professional. Once you return that capacity, the question becomes what the claims professional can focus on.
Investigation, strategy, communication, resolution, and interactions with the injured workers are what it’s about. It’s helping injured workers recover and moving that claim toward resolution.
At CorVel, we’ve seen what some of those processes can mean at scale. Our enhanced auto adjudication initiatives have saved more than sixty-two thousand adjuster hours annually by reducing administrative items.
Again, we often talk about automation, but the goal isn’t to remove people from the claims process. It’s to remove that burden so they can focus their expertise on what matters most.
R&I: Your survey highlights faster access to care, return-to-work programs, and rapid triage as key drivers of successful outcomes. Why do these foundational elements remain so critical even as the industry embraces new technologies?
CJC: Those fundamentals remain critical because they occur at points where we can actually influence the trajectory of a claim. Faster access to appropriate care, triage, and return-to-work engagements all shape what happens next: the outcome of that claim.
Technology helps us recognize risks and barriers earlier. That identification is helpful, but only if we then turn it into action. The earlier we identify a barrier or issue, the greater the opportunity to address it before it becomes a bigger problem down the road.
A good example of this is mental health. Our data shows that there can be a six- to twelve-month lag before a mental health component is formally reported, even though those factors may be influencing recovery much earlier. In those instances, earlier identification gives us an opportunity to intervene sooner rather than waiting for that barrier to become more established, which ultimately impacts the timeliness and resolution of the claim as a whole.
Technology can help us identify the opportunity sooner, but outcomes improve when that insight leads to the right action at the right time.
R&I: Collaboration and transparency were ranked as the most important characteristics of successful partnerships in workers’ comp. How does technology strengthen those relationships rather than replace them?
CJC: That was something I found interesting. Of course, technology matters; we’ve seen that, especially with the rapid advancement of AI, but relationships still come first.
In the survey, collaboration and transparency ranked highest at 47% compared with 9% for technology and modernization. We can use technology to help strengthen those relationships. Instead of spending time gathering, reconciling, and explaining information, more time can be spent in partnership, discussing performance and strategy, identifying opportunities to improve, and making that collaboration more continuous.
Rather than having isolated monthly or annual conversations to assess program performance or reporting, you can continuously surface those insights and discuss how to pivot or take a program to the next level. The best technology is never going to replace partnerships. It gives both sides better information to make those decisions together.
R&I: What will distinguish the most successful organizations over the next five years as they navigate evolving technology, workforce challenges, and changing customer expectations?
CJC: The next five years won’t be defined by who has the most technology. It’s going to be defined by those who can connect across the continuum of technology, people, and processes to make better decisions and improve outcomes.
That intelligence needs to be embedded across the workflow. Instead of having people go to a separate place to look at dashboards or other information and then come back into the workflow, having that information right there when they need it will be important. But it’s also about connecting that across the entire claims continuum, rather than looking at one aspect of claims handling in isolation.
What do the clinical services look like? What do managed care services look like as a whole? And how is that connected to the people who are performing the work and making connections with injured workers? There’s going to have to be a sort of technology accountability. Outcomes will show whether the technology and processes are working as they should, and that’s how we’ll hold those pieces accountable.
R&I: Based on these survey findings, what is the most important piece of advice you can give to employers, carriers, TPAs, and risk professionals as they plan their claim strategies for the future?
CJC: Start with the outcome you’re trying to improve, not the technology. AI and automation, at the end of the day, are tools. They shouldn’t be the actual strategy themselves.
Identify the biggest barriers in your program and the outcomes you’re trying to change. It could be adjuster capacity, access to care, or return-to-work. Different programs will have different challenges and require different solutions.
From there, you can determine what might change that outcome. It could involve technology and data, or it might require workflow changes, clinical resources, or other strategic partnerships.
Finally, make sure that it leads to action. The value of that data and technology isn’t just understanding what happened. It’s using that information to influence what comes next.
Start with the outcome, identify what’s getting in the way, and then use technology, data, and partnerships to close that gap. &
