Claims intake
Reads the first notice of loss on receipt, retrieves the policy, assesses coverage and prepares the file for an adjuster.
Measured on · Hours to first contact
Reviewed at first release
Build this one — Claims intakeAI agents that do real work
Damco builds agents for work an operations team already performs every day. The agent reads the case, prepares the decision, and puts the result in front of a named reviewer for approval.
Let's build an AI agent
Start with one job. Where the assessment concludes that no agent is warranted, Damco reports that conclusion.
Jobs enterprises are handing over now
- Claims intake: reviewed
- Prior authorisation: reviewed
- Invoice audit: delegated
- RFQ response: reviewed
- Exception monitoring: delegated
- Denial appeals: reviewed
- Supplier follow-up: delegated
- Renewal preparation: reviewed
- Submission clearance: delegated
- Customs documentation: reviewed
- Contract review: reviewed
- AP invoice matching: delegated
- Deviation write-up: reviewed
- Ticket triage: delegated
- Chart preparation: reviewed
- Credit assessment: delegated
- Referral intake: reviewed
- Collections follow-up: delegated
- Month-end close preparation: reviewed
- Vendor onboarding: delegated
- RFP response: reviewed
- Expense audit: delegated
- Maintenance planning: reviewed
- Lane quoting: delegated
The first agent builds what every agent after it reuses
Building the first agent means building the things around it: a written definition of what your business terms mean, and one controlled route into the systems the work touches. Those two account for most of the effort, and the second agent repeats neither of them. Five agents therefore do not cost five times one agent, provided the first was built to be shared.
Three agents, in the order they are built
Domain ontologyconstructed
Gatewayconstructed
Correction storeconstructed
Tool inventoryconstructed
Newly built: all four components
Domain ontologyextended
Gatewayreused
Correction storereused
Tool inventoryconstructed
Newly built: vocabulary, and tools
Domain ontologyreused
Gatewayreused
Correction storereused
Tool inventoryconstructed
Newly built: tools
This is the reason Damco declines to build a demonstrator. A demonstrator leaves nothing behind, so the second agent starts from nothing. The first engagement is scoped so that the definitions and the route into your systems outlive it.
The risk
From pilot to production
The gap between a pilot that impressed a steering committee and a deployment that survives an operations floor is the single most common place an agent programme stops. The obstacle is rarely model capability. More commonly the work reached the pilot with no named owner, no written boundary, and no business metric attached, and none of the three can be retrofitted once the demonstration has set expectations.
Disappointing deployments are more often scoped wrong than built wrong. The work that resisted automation for twenty years resisted it because each case required a judgement, and a rules engine has no way to form one. That is the work worth handing to an agent, and it is also the work that has to be bounded before any engineering begins.
Claims queue · 142 open · one queue, two treatments
Windscreen claim, standard termsposted
Windscreen claim, standard termsposted
Hire car, coverage ambiguousno rule
Remaining queueblocked
Processing haltsAlternatively the engine posts an incorrect outcome, which surfaces at complaint stage rather than at the point of decision.
Windscreen claim, standard termsprepared
Windscreen claim, standard termsprepared
Hire car, coverage ambiguousto M. Reyes
Remaining queueclearing
The exception is escalatedThe named adjuster receives the policy, the claim history, and the specific point on which the agent registered low confidence.
Scope is therefore the part worth arguing about, and the argument belongs before the first line of code rather than after the first review cycle. The two columns below are the position Damco brings into that argument.
The scope Damco signs
Damco writes this list into the specification before any build begins, and both columns are agreed by the person who owns the queue.
In scope
- 01
One queue with an existing owner
A named operational queue, not a capability. The owner of that queue approves the specification.
- 02
Full access to the material a reviewer reads
Policy, adjuster notes, attachments and claim history, before the agent forms any conclusion.
- 03
A prepared decision as the output
The artefact the reviewer was going to produce, presented for approval rather than for correction.
- 04
Reasoning retained and inspectable
Source material, the path to the conclusion, and each point of registered low confidence.
- 05
Escalation on a written threshold
Not on model confidence. Above the agreed threshold the case routes to a named individual with the full working attached.
- 06
Accountability to the queue's own metric
Days to settlement. Hours to first contact. Measured before deployment so the delta is attributable.
Out of scope
- 01
A general assistant across the organisation
A separate product category, and one most enterprises already hold a licence for.
- 02
Any decision absent from a written boundary
A boundary that exists only in discussion is not a boundary and cannot be enforced at the gateway.
- 03
Direct access to a system of record
All access traverses the gateway, so authorization is administered in one place and the audit trail is read from one place.
- 04
Adoption as the success measure
Usage and cost reduction are distinct measurements, and only the second one settles the business case.
The method
Three stages, aimed at one operational queue
Damco applies one delivery method to agent work and to every other engagement. The method is not an AI practice with a separate process; it is the same three stages aimed at a single operational queue, which is why a narrow first scope does not imply a shallow one.
01 · Strategize
Selection, boundary and business case. Damco reviews the queue with the people who work it, inventories the licences and platforms already held, and establishes the baseline metric before any build begins. The stage concludes with the job specified in writing, the authority boundary agreed, and the next three candidate jobs ranked.
02 · Build
The workplace, the ontology slice, the gateway, and the runtime nominated during Strategize. The people who currently perform the job review output during construction rather than at user acceptance testing, which is where scope defects would otherwise first surface.
03 · Operate
Correction rate, escalation rate and the nominated business metric, reported monthly. Change is driven by the instrumentation rather than by a release calendar.
What the method produces, on one job
The figure below shows one agent performing one job, in execution order. No path runs from the second panel to the system of record directly. The work traverses the ontology, then the gateway, and a reviewer is presented with a prepared decision.
Claims intake · one job, end to end
First notice of lossPolicy ••••0148 · three attachments · received overnight
Unassigned
Policy retrievedin force
Attachments read3 of 3
Coverage assessedhire car: yes
Reserve calculated£1,850
Ontologyclaim, coverage and authority, as defined for this carrierGatewayauthorization decision · audit record · reasoning retained
M. ReyesAdjuster · approves every case at this stage
Reserve£1,850
Coverageconfirmed
Low confidence flagged1 item
Audit record writtenAction, source material and approving reviewer. Enforced by construction rather than by policy.
- Built by Damco
- The job specification and its correction store, the ontology slice, the gateway, and the review console where a purpose-built surface is selected.
- Operated by the client
- Policy administration, the document repository, and the collaboration platform where an existing surface is selected instead.
- Nominated at Strategize
- Runtime and review surface. Both are replaceable without alteration to the job specification, the ontology or the gateway.
Damco does not propose removing a reviewer from the process at go-live. The first deployment prepares the work and a reviewer approves every case. Extension of autonomy is governed by a threshold agreed during Strategize, and the governance model is set out in full on the architecture page.
The queues Damco would assess first
None of the following requires a research breakthrough. Each one is performed today by a person who opens four systems, reads across them, and records a conclusion — which is the shape of work that required a judgement and therefore never qualified for automation.
Select the sector closest to yours. These are the four candidate jobs Damco would ordinarily assess first, together with the metric each one is accountable to.
Claims triage
Classifies incoming claims by complexity, routes each one, and flags the files carrying escalation indicators.
Measured on · Share routed correctly first time
Reviewed at first release
Build this one — Claims triageSubmission clearance
Assesses a broker submission against appetite, pursues outstanding documentation, and clears or declines the submission.
Measured on · Submissions cleared per day
Delegated on threshold
Build this one — Submission clearanceRenewal preparation
Assembles the renewal file — loss runs, exposure changes, incumbent terms — and drafts the proposed terms.
Measured on · Share of renewals worked 60 days out
Reviewed at first release
Build this one — Renewal preparationWhere one of these corresponds to a real queue in your organisation, that queue is the appropriate subject for a first conversation.
Where the engagement starts
Every position has a defined entry point
More than one of the following will be recognisable, and the specific wording matters less than the stage. The stage determines the next step, and each stage has a defined entry point.
Strategize
The candidate job has not been selected
- The board has requested an AI position.
- Twenty candidate use cases exist with no ranking method.
- A pilot succeeded and did not progress to production.
Entry point
Damco reviews the operational work, inventories the platforms and licences already held, and ranks candidate jobs by assessed value. The stage concludes with a ranked shortlist and the first job specified — systems in scope, authority boundary, and the metric it is accountable to — before any build commences.
Build
The job is selected
- The job is understood; the delivery scope is not.
- A platform was procured and nothing has been built on it.
- An internal build cannot obtain a route to production.
Entry point
Damco builds the review surface, the ontology slice the job requires, and the gateway through which the agent acts, on the runtime nominated at Strategize. The people who currently perform the job review output during construction rather than at user acceptance testing.
Operate
A deployment is already live
- The deployment is live and the target metric has not moved.
- Usage sustained for one month and then declined.
- The system functions and cannot produce an audit trail.
Entry point
Damco instruments the existing deployment: where reviewers are applying corrections, which cases fall outside the intended scope, and cost per case against realised saving. The remediation is ordinarily the scope or the ontology rather than the model.
Two jobs Damco would advise against
- A job nobody has written down
- Where three people in the room define completion differently, writing that definition down is the work, and the agent comes after it. Two weeks settling the definition beats six months building against a moving one.
- A job that runs twice a month
- The definitions and the gateway cost the same at two runs a month as at two hundred a day. Below a certain volume a person is cheaper, and Damco will say where that line falls for the job in question.
Bring one job from one queue, and Damco will report what handing it over would require, what it would be worth, and whether it is the right one to start with.
The architecture, block by block →← Starting points
Let's build an AI agent
Where it is not the appropriate job, Damco will identify which one is.