I am most concerned about the £500 fee automatically payable for complaints to the Insurance Ombudsman. Once again, I feel it demonstrates that Personal Lines brokers need their own representation, for I firmly believe that the top of the insurance hierarchy has no concept whatsoever as to what it is like dealing with "the man in the street."
I have found that there is a certain percentage of people who will try every trick in the book to get out of paying legitimate amounts. If this class of person realises that all they have to do is make a complaint to the Insurance Ombudsman, and we will have to pay £500 – all over the matter of, say, £50 for a change of vehicle or balance of premium – then we may as well just write the matter off straight away. Before anyone says that we should deal only with "good" clients, well, my crystal ball broke many years ago.
While we do try to eliminate the risk as much as possible, we live in a complaining society and some clients will undoubtedly see this as a way of making groundless complaints in order to get out of paying legitimate premiums.
Personally, I am not concerned about anyone making a legitimate complaint against my company, and where there has been just cause for the complaint, we have always made restitution.
I am, however, very concerned about unwarranted complaints. To give just one example, a summons was issued against ourselves as our clients' brokers because a third party insurer was contesting liability and had not as yet reimbursed our client's excess.
I presume that under this brilliant new proposed scheme, the client would merely have had to make a complaint to the Insurance Ombudsman and that would have cost us £500.
With the average motor premium in the region of £300-£400, how does this proposal fit with the Woolf principle of proportionality?
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David J Miller,
Senior Partner,
Independent Insurance Brokers and Financial Advisers,
Accrington,
Lancashire,
BB5 3GE.
Hitting the wrong note
Can I ask if there are any brokers interested in putting pressure on insurers to discount our monthly accounts for time spent and costs incurred in listening to music on insurer's voice mail systems.
We must be spending untold hours per week sat with the telephone in our hands waiting to speak to insurers.
Regretfully, no-one seems to care about this since, when we complain to insurers we get the same old excuses, of new telephone systems, staff shortages, and the volume of telephone calls received (which would probably reduce if insurers were a little more efficient and documentation was correct).
When are insurers going to seriously address this problem and return to the days when the telephone was answered promptly and we were able to speak to a human being.
Why should we have to accept this situation?
A discount on our monthly account would compensate in some small way for all the hassle.
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Adrian Moore,
T.G. Webster Insurance
Brokers & Bikerline Direct,
Commercial Street,
Brighouse,
West Yorkshire.
Fond farewell from Tony
I retired from CGU on 30th September after 40 tremendous years. During that time I have made many friends in the industry and have spent many happy hours in the company of insurance brokers up and down the land. A number of these have been purely business, some totally social but in the main most of them have been enjoyable, even though in some cases we have had differing objectives.
Dealing with brokers has been the part of the job I have enjoyed most of all and it is encouraging to see that after all this time, Independent Brokers are still a major force in distribution in the UK insurance market and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.
It has been impossible to say goodbye personally to everyone who I have met, but I would just like to thank everyone with whom I have had contact for making my involvement within the industry so memorable, fun, full of fellowship and with nothing but very pleasant memories.
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Tony Cornell,
Consultant.
No room for passengers
Having just read the article in your publication regarding brokers reacting furiously to CII proposals that chartered status should only be available to those who have proved themselves capable by passing an appropriate examination, I have to express my utter amazement.
Presumably these doyens of the broking fraternity base their demand for exemption upon their experience - are they not aware of the adage that experience is something you achieve just after you needed it? Experience is indeed a good teacher, but in modern business life can we afford to learn by our mistakes – particularly when the bill for those mistakes may be picked up by our clients?
It is not good enough to say that they do not have the time to study - underwriters at Lloyd's and the practitioners in the much-castigated life and pensions side of the industry were not allowed the luxury of such excuses. If they are serious about giving professional advice to clients, they should invest in their ability to do so and if they cannot prove themselves capable, they should not be in the business.
This is not a game with the rules set to provide someone with an easy living just because they have been doing something for years. Look around - the world is changing and you have to adapt. There is no room for passengers.
As to the suggestion that the MBA is more suited to today's brokers' needs, does the proponent not handle day-to-day insurance matters? The MBA is a superb qualification but it does not equip you with the skills required to negotiate complex technical insurance requirements; it is designed for the management of a business not meeting the needs of the client and should be built on to an insurance qualification rather than supplant it.
I find the whole matter grossly hypocritical. As brokers we demand recognition as a profession but at the first hint that we have to actually prove ourselves worthy, we run scared.
I sincerely hope that your article was greatly exaggerated, and that what you have printed was the reaction of a vociferous minority. Any broker worth his salt will acknowledge that the role is becoming increasingly complex and my own concern about lack of qualifications is that not having been through the process, those lacking qualifications often don't realise what they know.
I accept that qualifications alone do not make a good broker - or underwriter - but they do demonstrate that you have studied your craft and obtained a grasp of the fundamentals. And the CII have recognised that to stay in touch in an ever-changing world, continuous professional development is essential, something recognised by all other professions.
If the GISC and/or CII devalue the proposed title by allowing non-qualified membership, I for one will reject it as worthless and I will withdraw my support for both.
This is an opportunity to move towards a more professional industry - we should not compromise it by pandering to dinosaurs.
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Name and address withheld.
Microfiche at the double
Following your article (Library puts its information on-line, Insurance Times, September 8) I'd like to add some more information about the services available for documents and searches following the closure of the Companies House London microfiche library.
Following the completion of our acquisition of the Companies House London microfiche library on August 31, it is ICC who has implemented the fastest ever turnaround time for document searches.
Full searches from ICC's Juniper XD service and in hard copy are now dispatched within 45 minutes, half the previous fastest time of 90 minutes.
To receive documents on microfiche from Companies House, you can no longer order from London. All microfiche will be sent by courier from Cardiff, subjecting your precious documents to the vagaries of traffic and weather. Where time is at a premium in closing deals, ICC advocates the use of the mouse, not the bike for accessing critical document images.
ICC customers are also able to take advantage of extended hours for ordering document searches as orders can now be placed from 8am to 8pm. It is not the case, as your article stated, that the library's City of London office is open during these hours. The City Road library has closed
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Victoria McLean,
Marketing Manager,
ICC Information,
Hampton,
Middlesex.
