Have you haggled your way out of insurance admin fees?

Quentin

dunstonh wrote: »

who says we are unhappy. I would much prefer to pay a charge when I create the work than have a higher premium with no charge because I am paying for everyone else.

The point of the thread is how to haggle your way out of actually paying the charges!


You seem unhappy at this proposition:

dunstonh wrote:

But why should others pay for your admin?

dunstonh

Quentin wrote: »

The point of the thread is how to haggle your way out of actually paying the charges!


You seem unhappy at this proposition:

How does that indicate my state of happiness?

trukdiver

sh0597 wrote: »

I don't see how it can cost £30 to perform an admin operation. Seems like blatant profiteering.

They have to pay the parasitic software developers for their insurance related software, so they're just passing the cost on. After all, it only costs a few pence for a DVD so how can they justify the prices for software!

nobbysn*ts

InsideInsurance wrote: »

.............. would people be willing to wait longer in telephone queues in exchange for lower fees, ............

How much does £30 buy you in an Indian call centre?

InsideInsurance

nobbysn*ts wrote: »

How much does £30 buy you in an Indian call centre?

I've missed you.... was surprised you didnt jump in with daft questions earlier

Call centres may or may not be over seas locations, Id argue the majority of insurers arent but there are certainly some that are, but even if they are overseas that doesnt mean that all the supporting infrastructure is also overseas. I have to pay the DVLA and MID the same fee for accessing/ updating records no matter where in the world the agents are that are doing the transaction.

I dont know any insurer that has off shored its compliance structures. If you have offshored some of your call centre operations you often then have to increase amount of your onshore resources in more technical roles to deal with security etc. For example in a former client they had 1 compliance auditor to every 50 UK call centre agents -v- 1 to 10 ratio for their overseas team but the auditors were UK based for both. They had 1 escalation agent (underwriting support were their title) for every 150 UK agents but one for every 40 overseas ones.

The fees dont just reflect the salary of the guy you speak to on the phone but the host of other people that are required to ensure they are doing the job properly, their computer works, they are supported for technical queries, the buildings they all sit in etc

Whilst there evidently are cost savings to be had by offshoring your call centre, with very high staff turnover and high cost inflation those savings are eroded and hence why several companies have repatriated call centres back to the UK.

takman

trukdiver wrote: »

They have to pay the parasitic software developers for their insurance related software, so they're just passing the cost on. After all, it only costs a few pence for a DVD so how can they justify the prices for software!

The software costs a lot of money because it takes 1000s of hours of programming by skilled people. Then they only have a small market to sell the software so they have to charge high prices to cover the cost of making it.

Spiderham

takman wrote: »

The software costs a lot of money because it takes 1000s of hours of programming by skilled people. Then they only have a small market to sell the software so they have to charge high prices to cover the cost of making it.

Whoosh, I think you may have missed the irony there

sh0597

How come you can get all these quotes off a comparison website if it costs the insurers £30 a pop? Or are comparison sites bloating the cost of insurance?

rudekid48

sh0597 wrote: »

How come you can get all these quotes off a comparison website if it costs the insurers £30 a pop? Or are comparison sites bloating the cost of insurance?

Not sure where you've picked that figure up from but the comparison sites usually charge between £45 - £70 per policy sold. They do not charge for quotations.

InsideInsurance

sh0597 wrote: »

How come you can get all these quotes off a comparison website if it costs the insurers £30 a pop? Or are comparison sites bloating the cost of insurance?

They will be bloating the cost of insurance, less so from the quotes they get the brokers/ insurers to do but more from the £50-£75 they charge the insurer for each sale they generate for them

It does cost brokers and insurers to generate quotes and as such they will filter which requests they receive from the aggregators so that they arent wasting their money quoting on business they dont want.