Letter of the week
Do you copy?
Many brokers have long since discovered that motorcycle insurance is uneconomic due to the fact that the premiums are often quite small and the commi …
Letter of the week
Do you copy?
Many brokers have long since discovered that motorcycle insurance is uneconomic due to the fact that the premiums are often quite small and the commission rates quite poor.
However, the latest circular from NIG Insurance really takes the biscuit. I have been advised that it is no longer issuing a printed motorcycle ratings guide and if one is required it is available on its website.
All very nice for NIG with the many thousand pounds of printing costs that it has saved. But what about the broker who has to contend with the following:
Nice one NIG. But are you going to increase our commission with the money you have saved?
Frank Cottle
The Lansdown Brokerage
Bath
Single voice needed
General insurance contracts, particularly commercial cases, should not be regulated in the same way as pensions for obvious reasons.
The danger is that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) will seek to regulate by after the event (ATE) file compliance benchmarking audits, without there being any clear limits on the standards or on the benefits to the customer of the benchmark norms.
Commercial clients do not need to be nannied, nor should they carry the cost of an excessively/inappropriatly-regulated industry.
We have every reason to be opposing the current direction but we are lacking a champion.
Our industry is structured unfavourably with regard to broker self-representation - there is no single authoritative voice to oppose the critics or the legislature.
All brokers seem mired in self-interest or self-preservation and our public image is poor, which is probably why no one is offering to take up the challenges on our behalf.
Frank J Ward
Branch manager (Carlisle)
Giles Insurance Brokers
Over 60, not over the hill
Having attained the age of 60 and been awarded a B & Q Over Sixties Club card this same company invited me to obtain a quotation for home insurance.
It recommended Retirement Insurance Advisory Service, an independent intermediary that is a member of the General Insurance Standards Council (GISC )and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fortis.
Being inquisitive, I telephoned it and having gone through its long telephone menu was eventually connected to an insurance adviser. Answering all the questions I mentioned that the house was of a normal construction BSST.
There followed a deathly silence from the other end of the telephone and it was obvious that the adviser had no idea to what I was referring.
He said: "This term means different things to different people."
Of course, having been trained in accordance with the regulations laid down by the GISC he should have known that it stood for Bloody Strong Seasoned Timber.
Those of us who spent many years studying for our insurance exams know different.
Name and address withheld
Broker business on offer
Your recently published review of available insurance IT systems has made for interesting reading.
I would, however, like to take issue with the comments attributed to Andrew Paddick in your review of the insureright system.
Contrary to what Paddick suggests, insureright is not the only system that will offer brokers' business to consumers.
The brokersure.co.uk system has offered brokers a fully transactional business to consumer system since its launch in the spring last year.
The system offered by Brokersure is itself a derivation of Cox's award winning business to consumer site insure.co.uk, which has been running successfully since November 1999.
I am not sure that I fully agree with Paddick's comments that B2C is "what the internet is all about".
B2C certainly represents a remarkable opportunity for some brokers, but use of the internet to enhance communications between insurer, broker and customer and the opportunity that gives us to drive down the costs associated with traditional business methods is surely the greater prize in the short to medium term.
Michael Whitfield
Managing director
Brokersure.co.uk
