Following the article "Post Office charges to cost brokers thousands" (News, 24 August),
I have been left wondering what is it with this industry and paperwork? Most of which either goes unread or fails to give our customers what they need. And post-FSA, we are sending out more, not less.
Obviously insurance policies are legal contracts and so, of course, documentation is needed. But so much of it in paper form? Look at bank statements, flight tickets, ISA valuations and so on - you can now get all of these in any format and instantly; if required.
We should be meeting client needs and offering our clients a choice too - not deciding for them.
The increase in postal charges is an ideal opportunity for brokers and insurers to look at the needs of our clients in terms of delivery and communication.
Surely relying solely on hard-copies of documents being delivered by traditional physical courier services cannot be conducive to best practice in terms of efficiency, accuracy and cost.
Email is a fast, accessible, environmentally friendly means of providing documentation. You can save your documents, rather than store them - reducing the need for storage space - and they are accessible in the event of an incident as systems are updated where hard copies may be destroyed.
With links to relevant sections of websites clients can drill down to get as much or as little detail as they want.
Electronic documentation is now the norm for almost every other industry. At Fusion we are striving to be innovative in this process and so we are now offering a choice of electronic documentation delivery.
Electronic delivery may not be the answer for all our clients, but we do need to rethink the process with the consumer at the forefront.
A good start is to at least communicate in a way that the consumer wants us to, and if that saves on postage costs, all the better.
Kevin Pallett
Managing director
Fusion Insurance
