Car insurance - conflict of interest - company represents both drivers

Clive_Woody

DullGreyGuy said:

Clive_Woody said:
This was multiple calls over several weeks with various photos and statements provided before the letter arrived stating 50:50. This was not a frontline call handler, but supposedly a claims manager who had had chance to review all information provided and speak with the independent witnesses before making a decision.

Got to love job title inflation, unless it was like our letters which were all signed by the system as coming from the Claims Director (until he left, a year later had an accident with one of our policyholders and received a letter from us still being signed by him... we then went to a squiggle and a job title rather than an identifiable person). Our lot call them Claims Underwriters which is an odd title but intended to avoid Claims being second class employees -v- Underwriting.

Having time probably should be in "", even in the technical teams its a fairly high pressure/volume job. Before starting to deal with injury claims used to have between 1,000 and 1,500 open claims with disputed liability per experienced technician. Telephone calls are taken by whoever is free but you have to deal with all the inbound letters/email and diaries so the amount of time you get for actioning each item isnt significant esp if a non-letter requires you to find the paper file. 

So I wasn't far off the mark with "inept" .....along with understaffed. 

DullGreyGuy

Clive_Woody said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Clive_Woody said:
This was multiple calls over several weeks with various photos and statements provided before the letter arrived stating 50:50. This was not a frontline call handler, but supposedly a claims manager who had had chance to review all information provided and speak with the independent witnesses before making a decision.

Got to love job title inflation, unless it was like our letters which were all signed by the system as coming from the Claims Director (until he left, a year later had an accident with one of our policyholders and received a letter from us still being signed by him... we then went to a squiggle and a job title rather than an identifiable person). Our lot call them Claims Underwriters which is an odd title but intended to avoid Claims being second class employees -v- Underwriting.

Having time probably should be in "", even in the technical teams its a fairly high pressure/volume job. Before starting to deal with injury claims used to have between 1,000 and 1,500 open claims with disputed liability per experienced technician. Telephone calls are taken by whoever is free but you have to deal with all the inbound letters/email and diaries so the amount of time you get for actioning each item isnt significant esp if a non-letter requires you to find the paper file. 

So I wasn't far off the mark with "inept" .....along with understaffed. 

Downside of a highly commoditised distress purchase... price is king. You can go for a Hiscox type insurer but then their minimum premium was 4x the uk average premium and so you are paying for them having much higher staffing levels etc.

Clive_Woody

DullGreyGuy said:

Clive_Woody said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Clive_Woody said:
This was multiple calls over several weeks with various photos and statements provided before the letter arrived stating 50:50. This was not a frontline call handler, but supposedly a claims manager who had had chance to review all information provided and speak with the independent witnesses before making a decision.

Got to love job title inflation, unless it was like our letters which were all signed by the system as coming from the Claims Director (until he left, a year later had an accident with one of our policyholders and received a letter from us still being signed by him... we then went to a squiggle and a job title rather than an identifiable person). Our lot call them Claims Underwriters which is an odd title but intended to avoid Claims being second class employees -v- Underwriting.

Having time probably should be in "", even in the technical teams its a fairly high pressure/volume job. Before starting to deal with injury claims used to have between 1,000 and 1,500 open claims with disputed liability per experienced technician. Telephone calls are taken by whoever is free but you have to deal with all the inbound letters/email and diaries so the amount of time you get for actioning each item isnt significant esp if a non-letter requires you to find the paper file. 

So I wasn't far off the mark with "inept" .....along with understaffed. 

Downside of a highly commoditised distress purchase... price is king. You can go for a Hiscox type insurer but then their minimum premium was 4x the uk average premium and so you are paying for them having much higher staffing levels etc.

Indeed, pay peanuts get monkeys. I don't recall Aviva being the cheapest, but they certainly tick the second box.

DullGreyGuy

Clive_Woody said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Clive_Woody said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Clive_Woody said:
This was multiple calls over several weeks with various photos and statements provided before the letter arrived stating 50:50. This was not a frontline call handler, but supposedly a claims manager who had had chance to review all information provided and speak with the independent witnesses before making a decision.

Got to love job title inflation, unless it was like our letters which were all signed by the system as coming from the Claims Director (until he left, a year later had an accident with one of our policyholders and received a letter from us still being signed by him... we then went to a squiggle and a job title rather than an identifiable person). Our lot call them Claims Underwriters which is an odd title but intended to avoid Claims being second class employees -v- Underwriting.

Having time probably should be in "", even in the technical teams its a fairly high pressure/volume job. Before starting to deal with injury claims used to have between 1,000 and 1,500 open claims with disputed liability per experienced technician. Telephone calls are taken by whoever is free but you have to deal with all the inbound letters/email and diaries so the amount of time you get for actioning each item isnt significant esp if a non-letter requires you to find the paper file. 

So I wasn't far off the mark with "inept" .....along with understaffed. 

Downside of a highly commoditised distress purchase... price is king. You can go for a Hiscox type insurer but then their minimum premium was 4x the uk average premium and so you are paying for them having much higher staffing levels etc.

Indeed, pay peanuts get monkeys. I don't recall Aviva being the cheapest, but they certainly tick the second box.

Amusingly, given Hiscox's old advert:


 Aviva are full spectrum, they have cheap and cheerful policies and full fat. Maybe avoid the absolute bottom of the barrel on direct business but most likely on the panel of some real bottom feeding intermediaries.