Insurance pay out rates

hdh74

Last year while looking at renewing the house insurance I found an article online which listed the companies with best pay-out rates. Along with the worst - and some were terribly low. I can't for the life of me find anything like this atm. Anyone know anywhere to find this sort of info please?

Mark_d

The insurers with the best payout rates don't care how careful and proactive the homeowners have been, they just pay what is requested.  Hence the premiums are high and the policies are less comprehensive.  To choose the best insurer I would suggest looking at review sites, and the look through the policy documents of a handful of insurers - then get quotes

DullGreyGuy

https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/data/general-insurance-value-measures-data-2022#lf-chapter-id-data-tables

The above table can be switched to be by insurance firm but its 1) historic, 2) far from complete, 3) is at insurer/class of insurance not product level and 4) doesn't give any indication of why the variance in acceptance rates or their processes. A simplified version, but identical data, is on https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/buildings-contents-insurance-claims-statistics

To give an indication of the "problem", usual lies, lies, damn lies and statistics... you call to say your TV has died, you call insurer 1 and they tell you that electronic failure isn't covered and the call ends, you call insurer 2, they register a claim, instantly tell you the claim isn't covered and close it as a rejected claim... insurer 2 now has a lower acceptance rate than 1 but both have declined a claim. 

Many insurers sell budget and mid-high end policies, needless to say budget ones have tighter terms so accept less claims. Looking at those that only sell high end policies they unsurprisingly have a higher acceptance rate but could have guessed that from just reading the policy. Similarly there are those that specialise in insuring those in financial difficulty, previously had insurance called for fraud etc, they'll have the most restrictive terms of all and the lowest acceptance rate but would that surprise you with their customer base?

hdh74

Thank you both. I am of course looking at review sites. However, I am aware that many long-established companies with great reviews and scores on trust pilot etc have dramatically dropped their claims acceptance rates recently.

There's a petition on which btw: https://www.which.co.uk/campaigns/end-the-insurance-rip-off?fbclid=IwY2xjawFDtzZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHW9U7Cinzo5wOz_PNnBD-cm6yu7ZjWyNEAUidYYziBbDcy529Nshp1V7vA_aem_e-3wxjlf_dBon4M13-wJ5Q

A friend of ours had to live in temporary accommodation for almost a year after a house fire, mainly due to incompetence from her well-known insurer - which ate up a huge chunk of the claim payout and means she cannot afford to replace a lot of what was lost. Another friend ended up in a long wrangle about something that should have been straightforward - but was fortunately nothing devastating.

I'm trying to gather as much info as possible this year.

BarelySentientAI

What a catastrophically stupid petition.

Emotive language designed to obfuscate the actual changes being requested, some of which are pointless and others of which are entirely designed to advantage one group over a 'less deserving' other.

hdh74

BarelySentientAI said:

What a catastrophically stupid petition.

Emotive language designed to obfuscate the actual changes being requested, some of which are pointless and others of which are entirely designed to advantage one group over a 'less deserving' other.

I agree the petition could have been done a lot better. It does however highlight awareness of a growing problem.

DullGreyGuy

hdh74 said:

Thank you both. I am of course looking at review sites. However, I am aware that many long-established companies with great reviews and scores on trust pilot etc have dramatically dropped their claims acceptance rates recently.

There's a petition on which btw: https://www.which.co.uk/campaigns/end-the-insurance-rip-off

A friend of ours had to live in temporary accommodation for almost a year after a house fire, mainly due to incompetence from her well-known insurer - which ate up a huge chunk of the claim payout and means she cannot afford to replace a lot of what was lost. Another friend ended up in a long wrangle about something that should have been straightforward - but was fortunately nothing devastating.

I'm trying to gather as much info as possible this year.

Typical Which? nonsense... we used to operate 3 brands - mass-exclusive, mainstream and budget. It was the same staff you dealt with in all cases just they changed their salutation. In reality the mass-exclusive and mainstream brand had identical policies and just the marketing differed, the budget was a brand we'd acquired and actually had a slight better policy than the other two. Despite that Which? constantly rated the brands substantially differently and in order of mass-exclusive top and budget bottom. 

As to instillment charges... people selling insurance aren't lenders, their APRs are commensurate with credit card providers. Brokers in particular have to payover the premiums in full at inception irrespective of if their customer is paying them monthly or annually. Insurers aren't obliged to offer instalments, if someone cannot afford premiums in one go dont see why insurers should be forced to provide credit at more favourable terms than say Vanquish would offer the person a CC. 

The majority of customers haven't made a claim in the last 5 years, many much longer... so on what basis do they "not trust insurer"? It's not from personal experience but what the press and urban myth states. Oddly they dont include the fact that the majority of people say they'd be willing to defraud an insurer... there is at least daily advice on this site to "forget" to tell insurers about accidents etc. 

The stat on Ombudsman cases is equally misleading, over 2/3 of cases for insurance aren't upheld at all, for some classes it's even higher. So to say the customer gets inconvenience compensation for 2/3 of upheld cases really overplays it and is it any wonder that not getting £10,000 for your claim due to a mistake by your insurer would lead to some compensation on top?



Would need vastly more information on your friends claim and what went wrong. Home insurance includes Alternative Accommodation cover if the home cannot be lived in due to an insured peril so that would raise the question of why they were paying for that themselves? Did they buy a cheap policy with a low limit? Was the home habitable but they didnt want to go back? Did they want a better property than the insurer was offering so got a contribution towards a more expensive rental?


Really it doesn't need petitions to be signed etc but for sites, the press etc to change their tune and talk about buying quality insurance not cheap insurance, there is a proliferation of low quality products because people will switch from a household name with a quality product to an offshore unknown middleman to save under £5/year... one brand that considers itself a "consumer champion" found that 70% of customers would switch to save under £1/year. 

HNW players, Hiscox etc, continue to create high quality policies where they compete on completeness of cover, claims experience etc but then their insureds value the protection not the purchase price. 

Aretnap

BarelySentientAI said:

What a catastrophically stupid petition.

Emotive language designed to obfuscate the actual changes being requested, some of which are pointless and others of which are entirely designed to advantage one group over a 'less deserving' other.

But in the plus side, have you considered how much it will grow the Consumer's Association's Email distribution list?

(That's the main goal of nearly all of these petitions)

benny5

Anyone know if 'Defaqto' rating are reliable?

DullGreyGuy

benny5 said:

Anyone know if 'Defaqto' rating are reliable?

They're like hotel star rating. Remember a TV programme about the star rating system, they told a medium 2* B&B that if they closed their box room it would pull their average room size up getting them 3* and adding £20 per room which would be much better than the £40 a night they sold the box room at. 

As such if you know the score card you can easily design a product to be anywhere on the spectrum, that doesn't mean its backed up with the service or ethos of "5*"