Atlis Blog & Resources

You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure: The Missing KPIs in ALE and CAT Logistics

AI insurance claims processing is revolutionizing catastrophe management in Canada, addressing challenges from frequent natural disasters. It enhances vendor coordination, minimizes ALE leakage, and improves customer experiences through effective data use and automation. Key advancements include damage assessment, claims prioritization, and unified vendor management, all aimed at optimizing response efforts and efficiency.

Written by

Atlis AI

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What it actually takes to run catastrophe claims, ALE, and vendor operations when events hit. No theory. Just the workflows, metrics, and decisions that determine outcomes.

This is part of our 5-part series, Atlis Field Manual.

ALE – Adjusters – Atlis

Most carriers have no shortage of metrics. Severity and frequency trends, loss ratios by line, NPS scores, call center performance—these are well established.

But when the conversation turns to Additional Living Expenses and vendor logistics, the numbers often disappear. Leaders know ALE is “expensive.” They know adjusters are “busy.” They rarely have consistent, system-generated metrics to quantify either.

The result is that a meaningful portion of CAT performance is effectively managed by anecdote.

The KPI blind spot

Typical claims reporting focuses on:

  • Indemnity and expense ratios
  • Cycle times for end-to-end claim handling
  • Customer satisfaction and complaints
  • Fraud indicators and recovery rates

Important, but incomplete.

For ALE and logistics, three basic questions are often hard to answer with data:

  • How long does it actually take to secure housing for a displaced policyholder?
  • How much of our ALE spend is outside our own benchmarks or guidelines?
  • How much adjuster time is consumed by logistics tasks vs. adjudication?

If those answers require manual data pulls, interviews, or one-off analysis, they won’t be part of regular decision-making.

Four foundational metrics

You don’t need an exhaustive data model to start managing ALE more deliberately. In practice, four metrics provide a solid foundation:

  1. ALE leakage rate
    The share of ALE spend that falls outside defined rate or duration guardrails.
  2. Time to placement
    The median time from first notice of loss to confirmed housing placement for displaced policyholders.
  3. Adjuster time mix
    The proportion of adjuster hours spent on logistics and coordination versus adjudication and customer communication, especially during CAT.
  4. Vendor cycle times
    How long vendors take to accept assignments, complete key steps, and submit invoices.

See how Atlis captures these metrics automatically →

These metrics won’t solve the problem on their own. They will make it visible.

Why email and spreadsheets are the enemy of measurement

The obstacle isn’t a lack of BI tools; it’s where the work happens.

If ALE requests are sent over email, decisions are made on calls, and tracking lives in spreadsheets:

  • Events aren’t captured consistently
  • Context is scattered across systems
  • Reconstructing throughput and leakage requires detective work

Measurement becomes a project rather than a byproduct.

Turning workflows into data

To make ALE and logistics measurable, the workflows themselves need to emit structured data:

  • Every request, assignment, and approval is logged as an event with timestamps
  • Every placement and extension passes through a standard process, with clear status transitions
  • Every rate and invoice is tied to a set of reference rules, not just a free‑form note

Once this is true, calculating leakage, time to placement, vendor performance, and time mix is straightforward. The difficulty shifts from “Can we get the data?” to “What do we want to do about it?”

Where we’re focusing

Our work on Atlis starts from a simple premise: if you want better decisions, you have to see what’s currently happening in detail.

We’re designing the platform so that ALE and vendor logistics don’t run on ad hoc channels but through orchestrated flows, where every step is traceable. The goal is for carriers to be able to answer basic questions like “How long do placements actually take?” and “Where is leakage concentrated?” without launching a special study.

The specific metrics that matter most will vary by organization. What shouldn’t vary is the expectation that this part of the claim can be measured as rigorously as the rest.

Explore the complete Field Manual →

Ready to explore? Book 15 min

“Why Manual Coordination Fails During CAT Events”

End-to-End ALE Orchestration

Have questions about this topic or want to discuss what this shift means for your organization?
You can schedule a time to talk with us here.