As customers, we demand 24-7 service from our banks, so why do brokers have to contend with insurers working nine to five?

I was chatting with some brokers in Glasgow yesterday. The Scots aren’t known for mincing their words, so I wasn’t that surprised when some of them started talking about service in no uncertain terms.

But one of the examples got me thinking. One broker said that he had a call from a client at 7pm regarding a claim. He immediately called the insurer in question, only to be passed from call centre to call centre until he finally got through to an ‘out of hours’ operator, who told him that nothing could be done until working hours began the next day.

Now this is probably a pretty common experience among brokers – and being in a painfully protracted claims process myself at the moment, I know that personal lines are no different.  But it seems to have simply been accepted by the industry.

Why is it that a completely different set of service expectations apply to insurers than to brokers, or indeed to any other financial services sector? I wouldn’t accept being unable to contact my bank out of hours, or perform transactions over the internet, so why is it okay for an insurer?

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