Have you haggled your way out of insurance admin fees?

trukdiver

InsideInsurance wrote: »

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.

I know of at least one major UK insurer that has offshored a lot of IT and back office work. Whether this is a real saving is another matter. The hourly rate may be lower but there is a lot of extra QA work to do. I once had a conversation with a German software developer who told me they didn't have those problems as they didn't offshore because of the language barrier.

InsideInsurance

trukdiver wrote: »

I know of at least one major UK insurer that has offshored a lot of IT and back office work. Whether this is a real saving is another matter. The hourly rate may be lower but there is a lot of extra QA work to do. I once had a conversation with a German software developer who told me they didn't have those problems as they didn't offshore because of the language barrier.

Back office and IT is different to customer facing roles.

It also depends on how technical the work is, a very large number of companies (insurance and otherwise) have offshored a large amount of "grunt" work but have retained the high value/ IP type work onshore.

I had the misfortune of having to do a piece of work on a data warehousing programme and manage the tendering process between a UK based consultancy and an Indian based one. The difference in the technical quality was massive but so was the price difference on paper. To get the Exec over the price difference though we gave both organisations a lump of data and asked them to create a database for it with a report coming out of it for which we gave the spec.

At the end of it they were to handover their code, the report and timesheets/ bill. The code was then reviewed and scored.

Now, even if we ignore the fact that we know that the Indian company put in a lot more time from their onshore resources than they claimed in the documents submitted the actual cost when you factored in rework/ errors that they had made, some REALLY fundamental ones, then they would have probably come out marginally more expensive than the UK company but more importantly have taken at least 30% more lapsed time to get the job done.

In the end the UK based company was brought on to do the architecture, low level design and final QA role and the offshore team did the basic programming and testing, both of which are not a massive amount more than data entry jobs.

The funniest one I heard of recently though was an NHS hospital that sends the voice files for all dictated letters across to India to be typed up and then the Word/ PDF (dont know which obv) come back to be printed and sent in the UK.

Saving4Jesus

Gary_Bighitter wrote: »

I rang Admiral to cancel my policy early as I sold my car. The policy had less than a month to run so I wasn't expecting a refund but was shocked when they tried to apply an admin fee.

I had exactly this with another company.

In years when I have known I would be doing a mid term adjustment I have made sure I chose an insurer which does not charge to make changes, such as Swiftcover.

sparkyrob

I got charged a £30 admin fee before I even took out a policy with Admiral! I hadn't had my renewal letter through from my previous insurer when I purchased Admiral's insurance, and when it arrived I noticed that the windscreen repair I'd had done via Auto Windscreens had come up on the renewal as a non-fault claim. I dutifully rang up Admiral to tell them this in case it made a difference to my policy. It didn't. However, because they had to add it to the policy (which hadn't started), they said I would be charged £30 for administration as I hadn't informed them about the NFC when I took out the policy. I asked them how I could have done this, when I didn't have that information until AFTER the policy was taken out - and hence why I was calling. They said I should have told them. I said I couldn't have told them. The simple concept of how time worked seemed to elude them. Eventually, logic appeared to win out and they "graciously" agreed to waive the ridiculous charge.

Doesn't bode well for any claim I may need to make through them in the future. Will certainly not be using them again.

InsideInsurance

sparkyrob wrote: »

I got charged a £30 admin fee before I even took out a policy with Admiral! I hadn't had my renewal letter through from my previous insurer when I purchased Admiral's insurance, and when it arrived I noticed that the windscreen repair I'd had done via Auto Windscreens had come up on the renewal as a non-fault claim. I dutifully rang up Admiral to tell them this in case it made a difference to my policy. It didn't. However, because they had to add it to the policy (which hadn't started), they said I would be charged £30 for administration as I hadn't informed them about the NFC when I took out the policy. I asked them how I could have done this, when I didn't have that information until AFTER the policy was taken out - and hence why I was calling. They said I should have told them. I said I couldn't have told them. The simple concept of how time worked seemed to elude them. Eventually, logic appeared to win out and they "graciously" agreed to waive the ridiculous charge.

Doesn't bode well for any claim I may need to make through them in the future. Will certainly not be using them again.

How did you not know you'd made a claim for glass?

If you didnt make a claim and paid Auto Windscreens in full yourself rather than putting it through the insurance then you need to take the matter up with Auto Windscreens

sparkyrob

I obviously knew I'd contacted Auto Windscreen, but I didn't realize (and at no point was it mentioned) that this would be marked as a non-fault claim on my insurance. This is the first such claim I've made, so I've not experienced this before - all I knew was that it wouldn't affect my NCD, and I didn't receive any communication from my insurer, nor AW, that this would be marked as an NFC. Which is why I was a little surprised to see that on the renewal, but also the reason I informed Admiral...only for them to leverage charges.

I think the 14-day cooling off period is a joke, to be honest. It should be fee-free for any issues/errors/cancellations, across the entire insurance industry - not "£30 for cancelling, £30 for changing a typo, £30 for informing us of something you had no prior knowledge about". Add to this the insurance companies' refusal to heed requests about not auto-renewing (once again I received a letter saying I'd be auto-renewed and charged, despite requesting not to be when I took out my policy), and all in all there's no wonder the industry is treated with such disdain by the public.

InsideInsurance

Its simply a claim, how exactly each insurer classifies it will vary. You were asked "have you made any claims?" and you seemingly answered "no" despite knowing you had.

If you had answered "yes" you then get a drop down menu for "type of claim" of which one is Windscreen

Cooling off periods are never going to be fee free, far too easy to get a car impounded for no insurance out and then simply cancel the insurance for free again as soon as you are out of sight of PC plod. There are often irrecoverable costs in selling a policy, why should everyone else have to pay those when its you that wants to cancel?

dunstonh

I obviously knew I'd contacted Auto Windscreen, but I didn't realize (and at no point was it mentioned) that this would be marked as a non-fault claim on my insurance.

It is not uncommon for people to think that but your insurance paid it. Therefore you claimed on the policy.

I think the 14-day cooling off period is a joke, to be honest

Why? it does exactly what it says. Without it, you could be tied for the full contract as legally there is no automatic right to cancel mid term.

It should be fee-free for any issues/errors/cancellations, across the entire insurance industry - not "£30 for cancelling, £30 for changing a typo, £30 for informing us of something you had no prior knowledge about".

Then you will have people cancelling their insurance every 13 days and never paying for insurance. How about the non-commission firms? You would be using them for work but never paying them. As commission reduces and we move closer and closer to explicit charging, are you saying that firms should stop paying their staff and get them to work for free?

tuk585

I had a SWINTON policy on my car and sold it a month before my insurance ran out (I was not replacing the car so did not bother to tell Swinton). I then got pestered by Swinton to renew the insurance. With only 6 days left on the policy I phoned them up and was told it was illegal to have a policy on a car I did not own and I had to cancel for £50. I asked to speak to the manager - he was the manager! I said OK this conversation did not happen - he said it was being taped! I said I would never insure with them again - don't care! Rather than have my insurance cancelled by them and being put on a blacklist I paid up :mad:

My advice - NEVER INSURE THROUGH SWINTON.

sparkyrob

The point is that I wasn't aware that it was recorded as a claim, and the insurer was unwilling - at least for the first 15 minutes of discussion - to understand this. There was a distinct lack of empathy from Admiral, and almost immediate determination to try and get as much money out of me (a new customer, who you'd hope they would want to retain) as possible. I fully disagree that a change like this would cost £30; it might help explain their £180m profit last year. Given that they are now saving money by electronically sending out policy details, it simply cannot be justified. If they were that concerned about the costs for making simple alterations (e.g. name changes, not changes of address), then why not allow customers to do that fee-free through their online account, and cut out the administration required on their part? Worse still, they are clearly under the impression that these fees are extortionate otherwise they be up front about them rather than hiding them away in small print.