Photos are compressed, voice notes are statements and media expires. How a UK or Irish brokerage collects claim evidence on WhatsApp that survives a file review.
The claim arrives as fourteen photographs and a ninety-second voice note. Someone in the office looks at them, forms a view and sends the insurer a tidy summary. Four months later the loss adjuster asks for the original of the third photograph — the one showing the water meter — because the date of loss is disputed. The photograph is still in the thread. The original is not.
Brokers have mostly settled the question of whether a claim can be notified over WhatsApp; it can, and the duties that follow are set out in our guide to first notification of loss under ICOBS 8. What gets much less attention is the physics of the channel. What the client sends and what ends up in the claim file are not the same object, and the gap between them is where files get lost.
Send a picture from the gallery in the WhatsApp app and it is re-encoded before it leaves the handset: resized, recompressed and stripped of most of its embedded metadata. Attach the same file as a document instead and it travels as it is, with its capture timestamp, camera information and, where the phone recorded it, the location. The difference is invisible in the conversation and decisive in a dispute. Test both on your own phone with a photograph you know the details of, so that what you tell clients is something you have actually seen.
For most claims the compressed version is fine: a dented wing, a soaked carpet, a broken window. Ask for the file as a document when the metadata is the evidence — a contested date of loss, a scratch the insurer says predates cover, a meter reading, a dashcam clip. Say so plainly in the thread: "Please send that one using the paperclip and Document, not as a photo, so the insurer gets the original." And tell the client, once, that a file sent that way carries whatever their phone recorded, including where the picture was taken. That is exactly why the adjuster wants it, and it is still their information to hand over knowingly rather than by accident.
If your firm runs on the WhatsApp Business Platform rather than the consumer app, an incoming attachment does not arrive as a file at all. Your system receives a media identifier and has to exchange it for a download. Meta's own documentation sets the windows: media IDs delivered in webhooks expire after seven days, the download URL you get in return expires after five minutes, and Cloud API messages have a maximum retention period of thirty days on Meta's servers. Nothing outside those windows can be reconstructed later, by you or by anyone else.
The practical consequence is a single question to put to whoever supplies your inbox: when a client sends a photograph, where does that file end up, and how long can we retrieve it? If the answer is "it stays in the platform", you do not have a claim file — you have a view of one. The limits at the door matter too.
| Media | Accepted by the platform | What it means at claim stage |
|---|---|---|
| Images | JPEG and PNG, up to 5 MB each | Ample for phone photos; a scanned survey or a large original may bounce, so send it as a document instead |
| Video | MP4 and 3GPP, up to 16 MB | A high-resolution walkthrough of a flooded basement will not fit. Ask for short clips of specific things, not one long film |
| Audio | AAC, AMR, MP3, M4A, OGG, up to 16 MB | Voice notes are rarely the constraint; the constraint is what you do with them (see below) |
| Documents | PDF, Office formats and text, up to 100 MB | The route for invoices, valuations, police reports and any image whose original quality matters |
The first hour is the only moment when a client will happily photograph anything you ask for. Agree in advance what "anything" is, by class, so the account handler is not improvising at 21:00. Our claim notification workflow covers the sequence; the list below is what to collect while the scene still exists.
| Class | Ask for in the first hour | Almost always requested later |
|---|---|---|
| Motor | All four corners of the vehicle, close-ups of the damage, both registrations, the road or car park in context, any dashcam file as a document, the police reference if attending | Engineer's report, repairer estimate, hire or storage invoices |
| Property, escape of water | Wide shot of each affected room, the source of the leak, the stopcock or meter, close-ups of damaged contents in place | Schedule of loss, contractor's report, proof of ownership or purchase |
| Theft and burglary | Point of entry, damage to locks or frames, serial numbers still legible, crime reference number | Receipts, valuations, security certificate for the alarm or safe |
| Commercial liability | The accident book entry, the location, witness names and numbers, any equipment involved — and no admission of liability in the thread | Risk assessments, training records, maintenance logs |
Chasing what is missing is its own discipline; the reminder sequence in our document collection use case works the same way for claims as it does for new business.
A ninety-second voice note in which a client explains how the accident happened is a first account, and the insurer will compare every later statement against it. Three rules keep that useful rather than dangerous. Keep the audio — do not treat your listening as the record. Write down what you took from it and put the summary back into the thread for the client to correct, which converts a monologue into something agreed. And never let a voice note be the only place a material fact exists, because nobody scrubs through audio at complaint stage; they read the file.
The same applies to the message where the client tells you something that changes the risk rather than the claim. If it belongs on the policy, it belongs on the policy, not in the claim thread.
Claim media is unusually rich. A picture of a damaged car park catches passers-by and number plates; a photograph of an injury is health data and therefore special category information under the UK GDPR; a burglary photograph may include a neighbour's property. Ask for what the insurer needs to assess the claim rather than everything the client is willing to send, and say why you are asking. Where an injury photograph adds nothing that a medical report will not say better, do not request it.
Storage follows the same logic. Claim media that lives only on one account handler's personal handset cannot be produced for a subject access request, cannot be handed over when they leave, and will not be found when the file is reviewed. It needs to sit with the claim, under your retention schedule, with a deletion date that someone actually applies.
Tooling helps mainly by making the thread belong to the firm rather than to a phone. In ORIS the conversation and the customer record sit in one shared inbox, so the handler who picks the claim up on Monday sees what was said on Friday, and customers and activity can be exported to CSV for the claim file or the insurer. What no messaging platform does is decide which evidence matters — that is the broker's judgement, and it is the part the adjuster is paying attention to.
You can ask, and for a handful of decisive images you should. Insisting on it for every photograph slows the notification down and irritates people who are already having a bad day. Use it selectively, explain the reason in one sentence, and accept the compressed version for everything routine.
Not long enough to rely on. Meta documents a maximum retention period of thirty days for Cloud API messages, seven days for media IDs received in webhooks and five minutes for a download URL. Anything you want in the claim file has to be pulled into your own storage well inside those windows.
Read the wording before you answer, because it varies. Many policies now accept any durable written form, some still specify an address or a claims line, and a few require notice to the insurer directly. Where there is doubt, take the notification, tell the client you are passing it on, and make the formal notification by the contractual route the same day.
Forward the evidence, not the conversation. Insurers and adjusters want a labelled set with the policy number, date of loss and a short description; a screenshot chain of a chat thread makes them ask again. Send the files, keep the thread on your file, and note in both places what went across.
Apply the same retention schedule you apply to the rest of the claim file, and write it down. Claim media is not a separate category to be kept indefinitely because it is convenient; it is personal data, sometimes special category data, and it needs an end date like everything else.
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