C-Suite - Insurer: To the heart of the promise

I’m now nearly six months into the role as Zurich commercial broker managing director and, as I reflect, there is no doubt we are experiencing some challenging trading conditions.

Strong levels of capacity in the market and benign weather conditions are challenging many insurers to maintain pricing discipline. This, of course, brings the eternal debate of value and price into sharp focus, and the difficulties in presenting this to our customers in a simple way.

Many insurers include a range of features and benefits but finding and articulating those that are most relevant to a client is a key part of the challenge for all of us.

Ultimately, though, paying a claim quickly and fairly based on the intended coverage, is surely the most important part of this equation on price and value – we are here to protect and assist clients in their hour of need, and our promise to do so must be clearly articulated as a matter of integrity.

This is why we are a very strong supporter of the Law Commission reforms and resulting Insurance Bill – we were the first insurer to confirm we will assess claims immediately in the spirit of their proposals.

I recently explained the Bill to a friend from outside the industry and it reinforced why it is the right thing to do. I told him that in simple terms we won’t turn down your claim if you breach an unrelated specific risk term. He was surprised to say the least that an insurer would ever seek to do differently and it reminded me just how it goes to the heart of the promise we make – and the ultimate value we provide to a client.

We’re now working through the operational job to get our policy wordings to reflect this, with an additional aim of being warranty-free.

We’ve provided clarity on disclosure, and also gone a step further than many as well, by not seeking to use the proportionate settlement remedy. Again, describing it simply to my friend, I told him we would not take £250,000 off his £1m claim if he innocently did not present the risk fairly, where we subsequently find he should have paid £40,000, not £30,000, for his premium.

We would just charge what he should have paid in the first place had his presentation been a fair one.

It made me reflect on the simplicity of what we ultimately do – we make a promise that we should stand by when our clients need us. In the final analysis that is the biggest component of the value we provide.

Richard Coleman
Managing director of commercial broker, Zurich UK