Thread re PNCB got me thinking about skills and attitudes that are unacceptable or redundant now, but were really useful 20 years ago.
Re my first job in insurance in 1986:
1) If someone came in for a quote a good broker would know the rate of the top of his head. i.e. 17 year old Ford Escort 1.3L, Guildford, builder. Pegasus (the insurer):175 +75%(age) +20%(building trade) +10% (area)...£404 to you Sir. Nowadays a completely redundant skill.
2) Complaints. Misquoting was common place back then and if a client really moaned about the extra, my old boss would come over and say "put it down to SUNA, no charge". The client would be very happy that he did not have to pay, not realising that SUNA meant stitch up next adjustment! If you did that now, you would not have a business as every transaction has to be followed through and justified.
3) The most audacious blag by my first manager. A young lad had not been put on cover and had his wheels stolen. There was no "facility" in the covernote books to help him out. My manager came out of the back office clutching someone elses paperwork (pretending it was the clients none existent paperwork) and with almost a tear in his eye told him that his excess was £600 so he could not make a claim. He then recommended him to get new tyres from a repairers he knew (and got a kick back from) and the client went away happy. Looking back, how absolutely un-professional.
The good old days....nah....the bad old days I reckon.
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17 year old Ford Escort 1.3L, Guildford, builder. Pegasus (the insurer):175 +75%(age) +20%(building trade) +10% (area)£404 to you Sir.
A few years before;
Swan (still Lloyds, but Pegasus hadn't even started then) Drake for drink drivers, Leadenhall for the criminals and modified cars, GA & NU for foreigners, NU for american cars, Provincial for older drivers, CU for people with kids, NIG whenever you could because not only was there a FOD discount of 20%, there was also commission of 25%, and so it went on. Oh, those were the days.
2) Complaints. Misquoting was common place back then and if a client really moaned about the extra,
Ringing up an underwriter, promising a beer, and begging for a Dolomite sprint to be insured for the same premium as a Dolomite 1500 "just this once".
Admin charge & adjustment charge targets.
3).......
I'm not even going near the "reserved" covernote lark..
It truly was the day of the cowboy.....
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Unbelievable wasn't it!
Others that spring to mind:
1) Charging an annoying client £15 for a green card to Coventry.
2) Some insurers like Leadenhall (I don't think they exist now)cancelling a policy after a total loss accident with no return of premium. For example, your car gets hit in rear and written off buy someone who fully admits liability and is properly insured (a rare event then!). Leadenhall would cancel the policy with no return premium and the client would have to get a new policy until the claim was settled in his favour. Try explaining that without getting a thump in the mouth! It was only 1989 when this was going on.
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I guess the two worst bits were the charges and the covernote abuse. The charges were immoral but the covernote abuse was right over into the illegal side of things.
For those not in the know, covernotes used to come in books with a number of copies. One to the insured, one for the broker, one to be sent to the insurer and the book copy to remain for covernote book auditing. No cover can be backdated, but that can only be checked by looking at the book copies and checking that they run in chronological order. Since they were handwritten you could not tell when it had been written, only when it *said* it had been written. If a covernote was spoiled then all copies should still be in the book. However, one couldn't ell if it had been spoiled as unwanted or after it was discovered that no incident had occurred in that period and therfore cover hadn't been required. A broker would be issued between 1 and 10 books per insurer for each of 50 odd insurers. Audits would never be carried out. The potential for abuse was enormous.
Charges; any change of vehicle attracted a charge. If the insurer would charge nothing, then the charge was a tenner. If the insurer did make an adjustment then any return would be reduced by a fiver or any additional increased by a fiver.
And change of drivers, change of address and aything like that used to suffer serious abuse.
Swan had the same cancellation following a total loss approach.
I remember doing a roaring trade in Drink-driving insurance. Basically it was a policy that, if you lost your licence through drink driving, would supply a chauffeur for the period of your ban.
I don't believe that the trade is anything like that now, and I'm talking more than 25 years ago. But for anybody who wishes for the "good old days" - if only you knew........
However, all that aside, the people you deal with in a brokers now know far, far, less about insurance than we did years ago. We were experts in both insurance and the insurance market. These days people are experts in telephone manner.
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I remember Fire , Auto and Marine collapsing and taking loads of peoples money with them.
You guys have just confirmed my suspicions of the insurance trade
Get in line with the second hand car dealers , builders, plumbers and other assorted rip off merchants.
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It is very clean now. All the cowboys have been rounded up and coralled...at least I think so!
You helicopter guys can be a bit dodge though! Not reporting failures that would ground a copter spring to mind....and that was going on last year.
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One more thing that may help people understand the covernote scenario that Mark and I have described, is that it was common for brokers to "reserve" a blank covernote somewhere in a book. This was called a "facility". It was like a get out of jail free card, if an error was made (pretty common) and a client was not on cover.
I remember one insurer who cancelled another branches agency because there was a paper clip mark on one of the book copies (a sure sign it had been reserved). This just meant everyone was told to not put paperclips on your "facility". I never understood, as it appears Mark doesn't, why they didn't just do un-announced spot checks.
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>>I never understood, as it appears Mark doesn't, why they didn't just do un-announced spot checks.
At one point Eagle Star announced that they would. Caused a panic, but they never did one.
The only ones I ever knew to tighten it up was Norwich Union. But they were so out of control over the short term insurance rider policies that it was hardly surprising.
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Retro - it certainly wasn't going on in my company.
Summary dismissal is the penalty for staff who breach safety procedures.
I always think that the best test of an insurance company is when it comes to pay out time.Then you find out how good they are.
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>>I always think that the best test of an insurance company is when it comes to pay out time
Do *NOT* confuse brokers, as Retro and I were discussing, and insurance companies - quite different animals.
And the pay-out-time test - is that a test of the company or the customer's ability to buy sensibly ?
The most common, happens all the damn time, occurence is someone trying to claim for somethign they are not insured for.
"I would like to claim for this £4,000 stereo please"
"Non-standard ICE is specifically excluded from soft top car insurance"
"I knew it, insurance is a rip-off"
"No, the £200 policy you paid for excludes it, you could have had a £500 policy which included it, but you didn't want it"
The insurance industry is no more efficient or immune from screwups then any other, however that is not the problem. The basic problem is this;
90% of people buy car insurance on only one criteria - PRICE
90% of people decide whether or not it was a good buy depending on the insurance cover.
This is ridiculous - if scope of cover in the event of an incident is important to you, then consider it when you are buying your insurance.
If you only consider the price, then don't whinge when you decide you don't like the breadth of cover.
Three facets of buying insurance - cheap premium, broad coverage, excellent service. You can only have two; you choose.
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I remember Fire , Auto and Marine collapsing and taking loads of peoples money with them. You guys have just confirmed my suspicions of the insurance trade Get in line with the second hand car dealers , builders, plumbers and other assorted rip off merchants.
I was with Fire Auto and Marine when they went bust, and they kept my premium. But what the heck, TPFT was only thruppence ha'penny in those days!
--
L\'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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Snail old chap - Some people had it harder than others.
My sister worked for GRE and she picked up lots of motor business after the collapse of Fire Auto & Marine.She had people in tears after paying out premiums which they could ill afford and losing their hard earned cash.
TPFT may only have been thruppence ha'penny but if you were only earning sixpence it was hard when you had to pay up again.
Mark,I know we are a motoring site but give people credit for being able to make a correct decision if they are told the truth .
After forty years in business I always read the small print and it is quite funny to see the look on sellers faces when I start asking questions and I take as long as it takes. The process of extracting correct information from some of the insurance sales people I have met is likened to drawing teeth. You have to drag it out of them.
The same criteria apply to your life insurance stablemates who used to mis - sell policies if it would earn them a bigger commission.
Maybe the business has been cleaned up now but I would not stake my pension ( or my next years motor policy cost) on it
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>>Mark,I know we are a motoring site but give people credit for being able to make a correct decision if they are told the truth .
Helicopter,
They don't. They really don't. You might, I might. But "people" don't.
They mgiht even be told the truth, but they don't listen. Only the price. Try and convince someone that the excess, rugs & clothing, DOC, glass, usage, and other conditions matter. It is unusual for anyone to see further than the premium and the mythically important NCD.
People truly believe that 70% NCD on a £1,000 base premium is a better deal than 60% NCD on a £500 base premium.
Retro, tell him, you must have seen it as well.
Mark.
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Yep, v true. For one particular insurer that was really cheap, but awful in service and coverage I got the client sign a letter saying that the broker had told them the policy was poo, they would have to wait months for a policy and longer for a settlement (ironically, I could not do that now). People still picked the poor company and still moaned when what I told them came to pass.
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