Car Insurance claim queries and qualms

InsideInsurance

OnanTheBarbarian wrote: »

Yeah but how much is the Aviva contract worth to them?

As a multi national solicitor firm that only gets a relatively modest proportion of their income from PI claims - not much if you balance it against losing their licence to practice law.

InsideInsurance

henrik1971 wrote: »

However, the issue for me, is when a conflict looks (potentially) fairly obvious as it would here to the man in the street, the companies involved should take extra steps to explain the position to the parties involved and demonstrate a level of transparency that gives the parties confidence in the process.

You always have to balance things, if you tell everyone about how you are going to deal with the conflict of interests you will create worry in some people who hadnt even realised that one may exist - "the lady doth protest too much" et al.

Certainly in my day we didnt tell everyone when we had a blue on blue situation, esp as we owned 40+ brands (many small affinity deals with car manufacturers, football clubs etc) and so many customers may not realise that we actually insured both parties because of the different brands involved.

However, if anyone did express concern we would explain how we created chinese walls to ensure impartiality. Ensure the two cases were being handled by different offices, ensure one case handler didnt look at the other case handlers file, if solicitors are appointed then ensure different firms were appointed for each sides, make sure case handlers continue to phone and write to each other and not chat about the case around the water cooler (different handling offices also prevent this) etc. Finally, I was judged on my case handling performance and ensuring I got good settlements for my clients and so I wasnt going to fall on my sword for the good of the company if I felt I could win my case.

Of cause these walls werent perfect, you'd know the good and bad handlers in other offices and that may impact your willing to fight them (though arguably you knew some TPIs were better or worse than others so this is somewhat equiv). We wouldnt actually litigate in small or fast track cases but instead go to arbitration by an independent barrister instead - though again arbitration is becoming more common in general these days and not just for blue on blue.

From what others have said here there are now additional regulator enforced rules and so things are probably even tougher than they were in my day when insurance regulation was relatively a matter of marking your own homework

[Deleted User]

oscarward wrote: »

The op experience to a large degree mirrors what my son, also insured with Aviva, encountered when he had an accident recently.

It really makes me laugh watching the adverts on TV about how your personal claims handler will restore your inner calm.

If anything dealing with Aviva made the whole thing more stressful as he never spoke to the same person twice, they never contacted him it was the other way round and they just seemed to do nothing.

Hi oscarward,

Sorry to hear about the experience your son had with us during his claim. Naturally it's not the usual high standard of service we expect customers to receive so I'd like to look into what happened, feedback to the relevant teams and hopefully prevent it from happening again.

If you'd like to take me up on this, can you ask your son to email me at social@aviva.co.uk with the following details:

• His full name
• Date of birth
• Postcode
• Claim or vehicle registration number
• A copy of this post or your MSE username so I can link the email to this

Any other details about the service that he'd like to add will be useful.

Many thanks,

Marv
Aviva Social Media Team

OnanTheBarbarian

InsideInsurance wrote: »

As a multi national solicitor firm that only gets a relatively modest proportion of their income from PI claims - not much if you balance it against losing their licence to practice law.

The SRA don't have the bottle to go after big fish like them, only the small practitioners to hassle about not completing their diversity surveys etc.

It was common industry knowledge that a rather significant PI practice in York was owned by an insurance intermediary long before the ABS rules were introduced, yet nothing was done as they were a large law firm with a turnover in excess of £100m

henrik1971

rs65 wrote: »

The FCA have rules for handling conflicts.

If I discover one I have an internal procedure to follow and would normally advise the individual by phone and follow up by letter explaining the conflict and how it would be handled. Some are unavoidable.

Did Irwin Mitchell write to you explaining their appointment?

RS65, IM did write to us to say that they had been appointed by Aviva to help us claim our uninsured losses, etc. When IM phoned us as a follow up to make sure we'd received the letter, I asked them about the appearance of a potential conflict (and why I thought that), but they didn't understand the point I was making - which to me was worrying in itself. If the man on the clapham omnibus can see an obvious potential conflict, but the company representative who works right in the middle of all this day in day out can't, it does make you wonder.
Regrettably it seems to be the way of things in so many customer service industries these days, big firms employing non-qualified people to keep salaries as low as possible. Those companies seem to miss the point that the people doing the work on the front line are the people who make or break the company's reputation, and they need to have experienced knowledgeable people that customers can engage with and have confidence in..