Heath and Chubb top service chart

Heath Lambert and Chubb Insurance Company of Europe have been ranked the top broker and insurer respectively for service quality by UK risk managers, according to the results of a study by Insurance Times’ sister title, Strategic Risk.

In the Insurer and Broker Service Study, risk managers rated Swiss Re as the worst performing insurer for overall service, while HSBC Insurance Brokers finished last among the brokers.

Heath Lambert was the top performing broker with an overall score of 86%, followed by Willis and Lockton.

Chubb won a closely fought race, with a score of 82%, narrowly beating FM Global and XL Insurance.

The criteria

The service performance of the brokers and insurers were rated by 90 UK risk managers. Brokers were measured against responsiveness to the client, ability to understand the client’s business, practical leverage with insurers and level of risk expertise. Insurers were rated against speed of access to decision-makers, quality of cover, speed and accuracy of documentation and speed and fairness of claims handling.

Heath Lambert was ranked as the top performing broker against all service measures, except leverage with insurers where it came in second place. Its highest score was for its responsiveness to clients, where it scored 92%.

It was praised by one risk manager for “always responding in a timely manner with professional and high-quality solutions”. Another said: “First class, direct access to expertise on the spot.”

Chubb also performed strongly in all aspects of its service. Its highest score was for quality of cover, where it scored 86%. Its lowest score was for the speed of access to decision-makers where it scored 80%. Risk managers commended Chubb on the accuracy of its policy documents. It was also commended for being “quick to answer questions” and its “decisiveness”.

Photo-finish for insurers

The scoring was very close, particularly among insurers. In fact it was an extremely tight race with a number of other insurers snapping at Chubb’s heels. FM Global and XL Insurance were both ranked equal second place, just one point behind Chubb. The fourth placed insurer, QBE, was only three points off the lead. Swiss Re, in last place overall, was 16 points off the lead.

FM Global was the top ranked insurer in all categories, save for speed of access to decision-markers where it placed thirteenth. It scored particularly highly for the quality of its cover (90%) and the quality of its claims handling (89%). XL performed strongly in all areas, scoring highly on the speed of access to decision-makers (83%) and the speed and fairness of its claims handling (80%).

All-rounders lead broker pack

Among the brokers, second place was Willis four points behind Heath Lambert on 82%, while Lockton was in third place on 80%. In sixth place, Aon was 11 points off the lead on 75%. HSBC Insurance Brokers came in last, 22 points behind Heath Lambert.

Willis was a strong all-rounder, scoring 82% for each service measure. Lockton performed strongly in terms of its responsiveness to the client and its ability to understand the client’s business, scoring 87% for each.

Comparing insurers’ performance on the individual services measures, it was a tight finish on quality of cover. FM Global came in at first place with a score of 90%.

The field was more spread out in relation to the other performance indicators. On speed of access to decision-makers, QBE was top with 87% and achieved this first place by a relatively large margin, being four points ahead of Zurich and XL who were in joint second place with 83%.

The scoring for quality of documentation spread the field further still. The difference in the scoring between first-placed FM Global (on 84%) and last-placed Swiss Re (60%) was 24 points.

The biggest spread of results was in relation to quality of claims handling.

FM Global again led the pack on 89%, with Chubb following in second place with 84%. QBE came in sixth, 17 points behind FM Global with a score of 72%, while AXA in last place was 29 points off the lead.

In terms of the brokers’ performance against the various service performance criteria, Heath Lambert led the field for responsiveness to the client with a score of 92%. Lockton and Heath Lambert were joint leaders on ability to understand the client’s business, each scoring 87%.

For practical leverage with insurers, the top spot was shared between Willis and Heath Lambert, both scoring 82%.

Risk expertise showed the tightest results. Heath Lambert came top with a score of 83%, closely followed by Willis on 82%.