What is the most influential factor that determines the choice of your main insurance provider?
- Underwriting service quality (34%)
- Claims services, reputation (18%)
- Product features (13%)
- Personal relationship with insurer (12%)
- Premium rates (9%)
- BDM support (8%)
- Other (2%)
- Communications (2%)
- Technology systems, support (1%)
- Licensee preferred list (1%)
- Institutional owner (1%)
- Websites (1%)
Financial advisers place an average of 54% of all their insurance premium business with a single provider, according to the recently released Investment Trends 2011 Planner Risk Report.
Based on this key statistic, our latest poll question asks:
What is the most influential factor that determines the choice of your main insurance provider?
The research firm notes how crucial it is for providers to become an adviser’s primary insurer, given the volume of business involved. It cites three areas it says will be key battle grounds amongst insurers as they fight for advisers’ business over the coming year:
- IT systems
- Websites
- Communications
A similar poll run by riskinfo in 2008 revealed that the relationship between adviser and life company was the most important factor when choosing insurers, followed by the quality of underwriting services. Is this still the case?
To what extent have factors such as industry consolidation, regulatory change, technology advancements, product innovation etc, influenced your choice of your main provider?
Consider the options, cast your vote and let us know whether your views on this topic have changed over time…
Add your comment now
6 Comments
I’ve said product features. In reality I should be saying claims experience. This is the business end of the process the client on claim has, and surely how that turns out is the key reason for recommending an insurer.
all the underwriting, communication etc is useless if the claims process and ease of settling claims is flawed. Any provider is pleased to take premium, some are terrible when it is time to settle claims
I have a major Traum claim happening at the moment and it will be interesting to see how this mob handle this given the change in ownership of the insurance company I recommended. Never had any issues in the past but that was then, with the new ownership things have changed. For the better or worse the client and I are soon to find out.
Dare I suggest that where an adviser is choosing to answer underwriting as their top factor, this must surely need to be recognised as having an emotional connect to the speed with which advisers get paid for each case (except for the few on fees). The claims factor is not an impact on incoming remuneration and neither are the other factors. So although the survey motives are sound, perhaps this has the capacity to skew the outcome i.e. of the two top factors, one is about the adviser more than the client and the second is about the client more than the adviser. The adviser angst I witness regularly over poor claims management and its effect on advisers and their practices far outweighs the level of angst over underwriting outcomes…in practice. I suspect this result is also more about the fact that underwriting outcomes by number far exceed claims by number, for any one advisers practice. So this weighting has an effect on the results too. I wonder what would happen Pete if you asked advisers to vote based simply on the criticality of the underwriting outcomes for the client and ignore the revenue-delay factor?
Underwriting outcome is really important. My experience is that if the underwriting experience is good (ie clear communication and sensible outcomes,as opposed to fast and furious), then the client will have confidence in the insurer. Claims is important, but with buyouts etc etc, todays claims darling can easily be tomorrows horror story.
Underwriting is the fundamental basis that determines everything to everyone.
Insurers need to properly underwrite to allow sustainability in their offerings.
Advisers need efficient underwriting to enable clients to have the best Insurance to suit the clients needs and to attain time efficiencies so the Adviser can do all the other work, that is a necessary part of running a Business.
Clients need a underwriting department that is competitive and flexible so unnecessary loadings or exclusions are not thrown at them,which ultimately affects the Adviser also,who then has to rewrite the whole Business again,effectively doubling the workload.
Communication is also a major factor as every piece of correspondence sent from Insurance Companies,has an impact that can either enlighten,confuse,create questions or create potential cancelations,which inevitably leads to involvement of the Adviser.