The Role of Metadata in Claims And in Courts

Adjusting and litigating claims has evolved for the digital age. As companies make the shift from paper files to the digital landscape, they are creating more information than they may think.

In the not-so-distant past, claim documents were physically printed and stored. With the introduction of digital file maintenance, information we now see in digital claim files may only be part of the information known to the company.

Metadata, or data about data, is an integral piece in all digital files housed by a party. Metadata is attached to pieces of digital information, from photos to internal email communications, associated with the handling of claims.

Metadata can be crucial to understanding an electronic document and can significantly improve a party’s ability to access, search, and sort large numbers of documents.

A digital photograph may contain the following metadata: name of photographer, height and width in pixels, date the photograph was taken, and even geolocation. Different types of digital information will contain different pieces of metadata.