The chief executive says this option helps deliver choice to consumers
Sam White, chief executive at broker Freedom Services Group, MGA Pukka and motor claims business Action 365, told Insurance Times that she is exploring cashing out programmes as an alternative option for policyholders – this is in response to the operational business challenges imposed by Brexit and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
She said: “We’re trying to look at alternative solutions that can help policyholders in case we get into a situation where it becomes so onerous to try and get hold of parts.
”This was something we were exploring due to the Brexit scenario, just to see what other options might be available, but we’re definitely keeping a very close eye on it.”
For White, cashing out programmes also have the benefit of giving customers choice in how they wish to settle their claim.
“I genuinely believe that consumers, the thing they want most is choice,” she said.
“You can have a situation where someone, their car’s been dinked in a car park and they’ve got damage to the wing.
”If you gave them the choice of taking a cash payment for that damage and them sorting it out themselves, or putting it into a repair shop and potentially it taking X amount of time if there are challenges around that, I think there’s a proportion of people that would rather take the money and get it over and done with quickly.
“They operate a very similar process in Italy at the moment and actually they settle the claims super, super quick. The longer a claim goes on, the more money it costs the insurer, the more dissatisfied the client is with the process.
“[For me, it’s about] what can we do to get to an equitable solution quickly and this is one of the options that we’re exploring and seeing how that could fit in alongside an overall programme of repairs.”
Fraud opportunities
Another area White is keeping an eagle eye on due to the coronavirus outbreak is fraud – in particular, the potential uptick of staged thefts that may be motivated by financial hardship, an unfortunate ripple effect of the pandemic.
“It’s certainly something that we’re concerned about, so we have increased the number of people in the fraud department because we’re aware that there’s different types of fraud that will potentially be committed in these sets of circumstances than you would see normally,” she said.
“We were concerned because of the financial hardships that people may be going through that we might see an increase in staged thefts or challenges of that nature. That hasn’t particularly been borne out.”
She attributed this lack of staged incidents to the increased police presence during lockdown and the fact that fewer cars on the roads make it more difficult to arrange theft opportunities.
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