How did your firm do? Analysis of individual firm FCA complaints data for 2018 H2

Carrot was the intermediary to get the greatest proportion of complaints for insurance policies sold in the second half of 2018, according to FCA data.

Intermediation - worst performers per 1,000 policies sold		Upheld	Adjusted
Carrot	47.83	41.60%	19.90
Animal Friends Insurance	20.65	24.40%	5.04
Hastings	19.39	69.30%	13.44
Homeserve	18.57	38.90%	7.22
IGO4	17.17	38.90%	6.68
Brightside	15.21	87.50%	13.31
Ambant	12.82	12.10%	1.55
Endsleigh Insurance	11.63	49.60%	5.77
Insurance Factory (Markerstudy)	9.67	34.40%	3.33
Carole Nash	9.58	50.50%	4.84

The telematics broker’s customers were among those affected by unrated Danish insurer Alpha going bust in May last year, but managing director of Carrot, Ed Rochfort, said it was the company’s strict approach to poor driving that led to the high number of complaints.

Figures revealed Carrot had 47.83 complaints per 1,000 policies sold, more than twice the number of the second worst performer, Animal Friends Insurance, which had 20.65 complaints per 1,000 policies sold.

The average number of complaints for an individual firm was 10.03 per 1,000 per policies sold.

“The FCA data is disappointing, and we continue to work hard to reduce the incidence of complaints,” Rochfort said. “Our robust intervention process also leads to higher cancellations than the industry norm. Intervention generates complaints because people don’t agree that they are driving poorly, but our data shows that it has a positive outcome because intervention significantly reduces accident frequency and hence the number of young people injured in accidents.

“The data also shows that a higher than average number of complaints against us are not upheld. Complaint statistics are an important yardstick but to get the whole picture it’s important to differentiate between insurance providers with different customer profiles.” 

While Carrot’s upheld rate was below the individual firm 50.60% average at 41.60%, this adjustment still placed it as having the most complaints per policies sold. It was ahead of the next worst performers – Hastings (13.44 upheld complaints per 1,000 policies sold) and Brightside (13.31 upheld complaints per 1,000 policies sold).

Both Hastings and Brightside told Insurance Times that they are both committed to improving its service to the customer to reduce the number of complaints.

A Hastings spokesperson said it makes the complaint process easily accessible for customers and has already seen a reduction in the number of complaints it has received for the first part of 2019.

“We take a great deal of care to ensure that all complaints are accurately captured and that our customers get answers and fair outcomes to the issues and complaints they raise with us,” the spokesperson added.

“We provide significant training to all our customer-facing colleagues and have invested in improving our response times, to ensure that customers wait the least amount of time to receive a fair outcome.

“We continue to challenge ourselves to understand how to improve our customer journey. This improvement activity spans people capability, processes and systems.”

Priority

Brightside said its position in the complaints table was disappointing, and that fixing this was a priority for the firm. The firm said it is confident recent appointments will improve its customer service.

A Brightside spokesperson added: “We have already implemented new training modules for our call agents, increased staff numbers, with a significant number of new team members joining in recent months, and we’ve upgraded our telephony.

“Richard Beaven’s recent appointment as Group COO will ensure that we improve our focus on getting it right first time for our customers.”

At the other end of the scale, Compare the Market was the strongest performer among the 24 intermediaries listed in the FCA complaints data for policies sold.

Intermediation - best performers per 1,000 policies sold		Upheld	Adjusted
Compare the Market	0.14	15.60%	0.02
Society of Lloyd’s	0.48	51.60%	0.25
UK General Insurance	0.55	68.90%	0.38
Collinson Insurance	0.85	55.40%	0.47
Xbridge Ltd (Simply Business)	1.73	54.10%	0.94
Gallagher	2.72	55.30%	1.50
AA	4.4	54.20%	2.38
Eldon Insurance	4.89	35.10%	1.72
Swinton	6.24	54.60%	3.41
BISL (BGL Group)	6.5	46.60%	3.03

It had only 0.14 complaints per 1,000 policies sold, and of these only 15.60% were upheld – the second lowest upheld rate, with only Ambant recording a lower upheld rate at 12.10%.

Companies featured in the data were those individual firms that reported 500 or more complaints in a six month period, or 1,000 or more in a 12 month period.

Insurers

Aviva was the insurer which stepped in to provide replacement cover for many Carrot customers, and insurance provision complaints data for policies in force revealed it was one of the worst performers.

It received 7.3 complaints per 1,000 policies in force, above the firm average of 3.56. It also had a high percentage of these complaints upheld (73.50%).

An Aviva spokesperson said a key factor in the number of complaints and upheld rate was the number of historic PPI complaints where Aviva was the underwriter. The FCA last year launched a marketing campaign promoting the PPI complaint deadline.

But Aviva said it takes customer complaints very seriously and that it is committed to excellent customer service. The spokesperson added: “Where we fail to meet customers’ expectations our first priority is to resolve the matter as quickly as possible and to act on the feedback we receive.

“We have a continued focus on reducing complaint volumes by improving systems, continued training and working closely with third-parties.”

British Gas Insurance was the worst performer among providers of insurance with 13.69 complaints per 1,000 policies in force, followed by Telefonica Insurance with 13.2.

British Gas also had the highest upheld rate of all providers and sellers of insurance, with 95.10% of complaints upheld. Telefonica had 61.70% upheld.

Outside of these firms though, iGO4 had the third highest number of complaints per 1,000 in force, at 11.13.

It was also the fifth worst among intermediaries for the number of policies sold with 17.17 per 1,000 policies.

Matt Munro, chief executive of iGO4 explained that as a provider of telematics insurance products, it affects the make-up of its customer base. But he said that for the vast majority of customers, telematics works well, and that 60% of its own WiseDriving product receive discounts through the policy year for their good driving.

Provision - worst performers per 1,000 policies in force		Upheld	Adjusted
British Gas Services Limited	13.69	95.10%	13.02
Telefonica Insurance	13.2	61.70%	8.14
IGO4	11.13	38.90%	4.33
CIS General Insurance (Co-op)	8.88	54.60%	4.85
Avantia Insurance	7.41	53.20%	3.94
Aviva	7.3	73.50%	5.37
Aioi Nissay Dowa Europe	7.71	42.30%	3.26
EUI Limited (Admiral)	7.75	43.70%	3.39
Devitt Insurance	6.4	24.70%	1.58
First Central	6.31	66.30%	4.18

Munro said: “For drivers with poor driving styles, the nature of the telematics model enables us to intervene, which can, in extreme cases, lead to cancellations and, in turn, increase the number of complaints on our telematics versus our standard motor offering. However this also enables us to continue to provide great rates to good drivers and strong underwriting results for our insurers.”

His comments correspond with those of Carrot boss Rochfort, and also with the higher number of motor and transport general insurance complaints in total. These rose 13% for the period compared to 2018 H1, and also made up 55.89% of all general insurance complaints. 

“We continue to invest in our customer journey to provide clarity on the product throughout the journey and to use our data for better upfront selection of customers that are more suited to telematics,” Munro added.

“We also monitor the root causes of complaints and this hard work is already coming through in our results this year, which show a two thirds decline in the number of insurance complaints (4.5 per 1000 policies in Q1 2019).”

Among the major UK general insurers, Co-op Insurance, currently in the process of receiving regulatory permissions for Markerstudy to acquire it, received the highest number of complaints.

It received 8.88 complaints per 1,000 policies in force, with an upheld rate of 54.60%.

Gary Hueting, chief operations officer for Co-op Insurance, said he supported the FCA’s drive to bring transparency to the industry’s handling of complaints, but that it is still difficult to compare insurers due to variation in interpretation of complaints data across the industry.

Nevertheless, he said the firm had worked hard to learn from complaints it receives, and had subsequently reduced the number of complaints in each of the last two six monthly returns.

“We closely monitor customer satisfaction across all aspects of our service and use these scores along with any customer complaints, to prioritise our service improvement programme,” Hueting added.

He highlighted a 4.5 improvement in its Net Promoter Score from 2017 to 2018, and moving up 119 places in KPMG’s 2018 UK Customer Experience Excellence Analysis as evidence of increased customer satisfaction.

“Furthermore, figures from the independent financial services ombudsman show that for complaints referred to them, our uphold rate in favour of the customer is significantly better than the industry average,” he added.

Top performer

Provision - best performers per 1,000 policies in force		Upheld	Adjusted
AIG UK	0.22	39.20%	0.09
Pinnacle Insurance	0.24	26.50%	0.06
DAS	0.37	45.50%	0.17
AmTrust Europe	0.48	43.00%	0.21
London General Insurance	0.55	44.90%	0.25
Royal London	0.75	48.60%	0.36
Tesco Underwriting	1	49.50%	0.50
Towergate Underwriting	1.1	53.50%	0.59
Highway Insurance (LV)	1.1	37.90%	0.42
XL Catlin	1.14	42.00%	0.48

Previous Insurance Times analysis of 2018 H1 financial ombudsmen complaints data recognised AIG Europe as the best performer, with only 6% of complaints upheld by the service.

And again AIG Europe was a strong performer for the FCA’s complaints data for 2018 Q2.

Recorded as AIG UK after the firm’s restructure, the company had only 0.22 complaints per 1,000 in force – the lowest proportion of complaints for any of the 50 firms listed as providers of insurance.

It’s upheld rate of 39.20% is also better than average, although the upheld rate of Pinnacle Insurance (26.50%) would place it above AIG UK on an upheld adjusted measure.

Paul Crutchlow, head of the customer relations team at AIG UK, explained how the company maintains its consistently strong performance on complaints.

“Underpinning the low levels of customer complaints received is the customer-centric culture operating throughout AIG UK, where all areas of our business are focused upon positive customer outcomes – not just the front line delivery of services (claims handling for example), but deep within all operations from governance functions through to product development and delivery,” he said.

“Equally important as the prevention of complaints through a positive customer journey, is the intelligent use of complaint data when customers do not feel their journey with us has been as expected.

“Effective root-cause analysis is critical to understanding where issues exist, their impact on our customers and crucially, how this is used in order to effect positive change contributing to low complaint volumes.”

How did your firm do? Full tables ranked worst to best 

 

Firm (Provision) - insurance complaints per 1,000 policies in force
British Gas Services Limited	13.69
Telefonica Insurance	13.2
IGO4	11.13
CIS General Insurance (Co-op)	8.88
Avantia Insurance	7.41
Aviva	7.3
Aioi Nissay Dowa Europe	7.71
EUI Limited (Admiral)	7.75
Devitt Insurance	6.4
First Central	6.31
BUPA Insurance Services	6.26
RSA	6.13
Legal & General	4.24
Gresham Insurance (Aviva)	4.19
One Call	3.99
UK Insurance Limited (Direct Line)	3.7
Carole Nash	3.53
CFC Underwriting	3.46 (1 April 2018-30 September 2018)
Animal Friends Insurance	3.43
Lloyds Bank General Insurance	2.76
Zurich	2.56
Adrian Flux	2.54 (1 March 2018-31 August 2018)
Car Care Plan (AmTrust)	2.53
NFU Mutual	2.52
Ageas Retail	2.47
Allianz	2.46
Assurant General Insurance	2.36
Domestic & General Insurance	2.28 (1 April 2018-30 September 2018
Acromas Insurance	1.99
Saga	1.94 (1 February 2018-31 July 2018)
AXA	1.82
LV	1.82
Covea Insurance	1.75
Call Assist	1.74 (1 May 2018-31 October 2018)
Sabre	1.67
Markerstudy	1.66
esure	1.51
Hiscox	1.48
Rock Insurance	1.25 (2 January 2018-1 July 2018)
RAC	1.15
XL Catlin	1.14
Highway Insurance (LV)	1.1
Towergate Underwriting	1.1
Tesco Underwriting	1
Royal London	0.75
London General Insurance	0.55
AmTrust Europe	0.48
DAS	0.37
Pinnacle Insurance	0.24
AIG UK	0.22 (1 June 2018-30 November 2018)
Average	3.56

Firm (intermediation) - insurance complaints per 1,000 policies sold
Carrot	47.83
Animal Friends Insurance	20.65
Hastings	19.39
Homeserve	18.57 (1 April 2018-30September 2018)
IGO4	17.17
Brightside	15.21
Ambant	12.82
Endsleigh Insurance	11.63
Insurance Factory (Markerstudy)	9.67
Carole Nash	9.58
MCE Insurance	8.88 (1 June 2018-30 November 2018)
One Call	7.16
Domestic & General	6.81 (1 April 2018-30 September 2018)
Autonet	6.76
BISL (BGL Group)	6.5
Swinton	6.24
Eldon Insurance	4.89
AA	4.4 (1 February 2018-31 July 2018)
Gallagher	2.72
Xbridge Ltd (Simply Business)	1.73
Collinson Insurance	0.85 (1 May 2018-31 October 2018)
UK General Insurance	0.55 (1 April 2018-30 September 2018)
Society of Lloyd’s	0.48
Compare the Market	0.14
Average	10.03

Firm	Upheld
British Gas Services Limited	95.10%
Brightside	87.50%
Zurich	81%
Legal & General	76.40%
CFC Underwriting	73.60%
Aviva	73.50%
Domestic & General	69.50%
Hastings	69.30%
UK Insurance Limited (Direct Line)	68.90%
AXA	68.00%
Lloyds Bank General Insurance	66.80%
First Central	66.30%
RSA	65.80%
NFU Mutual	64.80%
Allianz	62.90%
Car Care (AmTrust)	62.40%
Telefonica Insurance	61.70%
LV	61.60%
Covea Insurance	59.40%
Acromas Insurance	58.70%
BUPA Insurance	58.20%
Gresham Insurance (Aviva)	57.80%
Markerstudy	56.30%
Collinson Insurance	55.40%
Gallagher	55.30%
CIS General Insurance (Co-Op)	54.60%
Swinton	54.60%
esure	54.40%
AA	54.20%
Xbridge Ltd (Simply Business)	54.10%
Towergate Underwriting	53.50%
Assurant General Insurance	53.20%
Avantia Insurance	53.20%
Society of Lloyd’s	51.60%
Carole Nash	50.50%
UK General Insurance	49.70%
Endsleigh Insurance	49.60%
Tesco Underwriting	49.50%
Hiscox	48.90%
Royal London	48.60%
BISL (BGL Group)	46.60%
RAC	46.10%
DAS	45.50%
Sabre	45.30%
London General Insurance	44.90%
EUI Limited (Admiral)	43.70%
AmTrust	43.00%
Aioi Nissay Dowa Europe	42.30%
XL Catlin	42.00%
Carrot	41.60%
MCE Insurance	41.00%
Ageas Retail	39.30%
AIG UK	39.20%
Homeserve	38.90%
IGO4	38.90%
Highway Insurance (LV)	37.90%
Saga	35.60%
Autonet	35.10%
Eldon Insurance	35.10%
Rock Insurance	34.90%
Insurance Factory (Markerstudy)	34.40%
Adrian Flux	30.30%
Call Assist	26.50%
Pinnacle Insurance	26.50%
Devitt Insurance	24.70%
Animal Friends	24.40%
One Call	23.70%
Compare the Market	15.60%
Ambant	12.10%
Average (individual firm)	50.60%