Think Tank: Should the industry promote paid claims to combat bad publicity?
Insurers should do more to publicise paid claims statistics, according to guests at COVER's latest Think Tank.
Discussing the future of critical illness (CI) insurance, John Joseph, principal of John Joseph Financial Services, said that firms need to promote their claims statistics if they wish to see an increase in consumer confidence.
"This would show consumers that insurers are also paying out a large number of claims," he said. Joseph added that it could help repair some of the damage caused by recent TV programmes, which have painted a skewed picture of the product.
"It can not do the industry any good when all insurance companies are tarred by one of these programmes," he said. Agreeing with Joseph, Nick Kirwan, marketing director for protection at Scottish Widows, said that although there may only be one firm that has been depicted as not paying out valid claims, it will eventually affect the whole industry. "Three months after one of these programmes has been aired, consumers won't remember what company it was. They will just remember it was an insurance company," he said.
Joseph agreed, and called on the industry to do more to defend its reputation. "I want to see the industry take action against the television production companies that are misleading the public by biased and untrue reporting of claims," he said.
However, Richard Walsh, head of health at the Association of British Insurers (ABI), stressed that publishing claims figures for individual firms could prove quite dangerous.
"I think there is a danger that people will read a lot more into that information than is actually there. The difference in claims statistics between different companies could be related to a number of things, for example, a company's client base.
"For the consumer to assume that the covered company was paying out more claims than another company would be wrong," he said.
Following the recent calls for insurers to be more transparent on both paid and declined claims, Walsh said he had no problems with individual firms revealing data. "It is each company's decision to publish its own claims statistics. However, I don't think an overall comparison between companies would be very helpful," he added.
nFor the full debate, please see the Think Tank supplement free with this issue of COVER.
