The route from underwriter to insured is paved with opportunities for misunderstanding. Robin Wood outlines ways to ensure communication is clear
This week's CPD is about a very important subject that embraces all aspects of working life. It is something that any reader who works in the insurance services industry should consider carefully.
There is an old and perhaps apocryphal story of a message that was passed from the front line in the trenches of the Somme back to HQ. It simply said: "Send reinforcements we are going to advance", which, passed verbally and through a number of points, arrived at HQ as the puzzling "send three and four-pence, we are going to a dance".
What, you may ask, has that got to do with insurance?
The answer very simply is millions of pounds lost to the public each year. (Regulators take note).
In the insurance world there are many occasions when a document or communication from one party to another is passed via one or more agents.
The classic case is information from an underwriter to the insured, which may pass through as many as three or four agents. For some reason, perhaps the desire for greater name awareness, there is a dangerous tradition that, rather than passing on the original communication from the underwriter, the information is conveyed by way of translation or transposition into a form that gives the impression of emanating from the agent.
There is a multitude of ways in which, in law, information should be communicated in its original form from the insurer to the insured (who are, after all, the contracting parties) but which ends up distorted (with good intentions or unintentionally) by agents and brokers along the way.
Problem areas include:
The effect is often to put the insured in a position where a claim may be rejected or a policy avoided at some time in the future.
One of the worst cases I have seen is the broker who extracts all the onerous conditions and obligations from a quotation and re-conveys them to the insured under the amorphous heading "Conditions, warranties, exclusions and excesses" in the belief that it is satisfying GISC requirements, but with no attempt to identify which is which.
Whether information is going up or down the distribution chain, there are risks lying round every corner and ultimately it tends to be the public or the professional indemnity (PI) insurer who picks up the tab.
As an exercise, look at your own firm or department and consider each of the following examples and whether they could occur:
I am sure that this exercise will throw up many more examples (please email them to us if you find more).
One of the key learning points is that in order to complete a thorough procedures manual, you will need to analyse the risks that arise in the processes you adopt to transact business. One of the key risks is that the actual terms of a contract of insurance are not communicated from insurer to insured or that what is communicated is incorrect.
It may just be a case of ensuring communications are not misunderstood or mis-translated along the distribution route, but it may also be a case of adopting procedures that reasonably ensure that communications have been received. For example, we know that some insurers may take a month to confirm cover; remember that 8% of all claims occur within a month of instructions being given, but only 0.3% occur within 24 hours.
It may be more attractive to `bundle' information to the insured under your own house style, particularly with some of the less than user-friendly wordings issued by insurers, but do take care to ensure that you and your customers understand and know what the underwriter intended.
Finally, remember also that if you are the agent of the insured the law deems that the insured has received something when it is in your possession. When you are undertaking this exercise, do make sure that you check how long it takes for that information to be re-conveyed to the insured. It really should not be very long at all and any regulator will expect you to have laid down standards in this area and confirmation that you have a system of checking that these standards are being met.
You may well have wanted to go to a dance, but even slight errors of communication can prove very costly. And remember that
ruy.lopez@rwassociates.softnet.co.uk
Answers to last week's CPD:
1. Debt to Equity Ratio 2002: 53% -2001: 39% .
Very low. The company is making good profits and has low outside borrowings.
2. Debtors' collection period 2002: 66.9 days - 2001: 73.0 days
This is improving and is quite low.
3. Creditor's payment period 2002: 54.1 days - 2001: 65.0 days
This shows that they are paying creditors quicker than they are collecting debts. This is not ideal but in reality most companies will be doing this. The difference between the two is low which is good.
Using this CPD page
For the vast majority of practitioners and indeed support and supervisory staff in our industry, CPD is about regular learning and study that is planned, recorded, timed and evaluated.
If you are a member of a professional body with a CPD requirement there will be certain rules regarding the quality and nature of study material, and the way in which it is recorded.
For staff of GISC members this means recording on your individual training file what the learning was, who provided it and when.
It might be structured, such as a course, a learning programme or exam study. But it can also be unstructured. This form of study encompasses reading the trade press, technical material or taking part in activities to support your professional body.
Some CPD requirements are points related (a little antiquated) and others require a time value to be allocated.
For example, it might take one hour to read Insurance Times each week. Most of that could be put as a time value, but, in reality, perhaps only an half hour was devoted to learning something. The rule is to be honest with yourself and record the time that is relevant.
Always take time to make a note of what you felt you gained from the activity. This is useful information for anyone else considering the same activity.
In response to the popularity of our CPD programme each week's CPD page can now be downloaded from our website. We will be preparing a binder for you to keep these in alongside the results of the exercises.
To download a PDF of this article as it appears in the magazine click here .
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