How brokers can do a much better job of servicing clients

Canada’s property and casualty insurance industry is doing a better job of client education generally, but organizations of all sizes can do a “much better job” of putting the client first, said one expert during the Young Brokers Conference in Niagara Falls.

For example, brokers can be proactive in servicing clients during a claim.

“If we’re all honest with ourselves, we’re all guilty of it,” said Dario Battista, president and CEO at isure, in a discussion about the challenges and opportunities facing brokers. “Yes, there’s a one-off where a client has a big claim and we’re at their house, but we’re not doing it across the board. So, I think there’s real opportunity there.”

“It’s not really the big claims…[but] the $5,000 claims [that are the] challenge,” added Joe Colby, vice president of claims at Echelon.

The good news is client education is more prevalent today than “say, 20 years ago,” said Battista. “I think that’s a good foundation for us as a distribution channel to help clients through complicated risk situations. When these fine folks are figuring out how to pay it, we have to manage that relationship.”

But what’s the reason for this lag in customer service?

“Resourcing is the biggest culprit behind the service level issues that [are] challenged,” said Colby. “The industry is struggling with human capital. We’re finding that is driving a lot of the service issues we see.”

Industry experts have been aware of service level challenges in recent months, particularly when NatCats occur. Consumers’ claims are triaged based on how hard they’ve been hit. But this can leave some clients in the lurch during NatCats when their claims are less significant than others’.

Although customer support may be lagging in some areas, opportunities exist for the P&C industry to step up further. For example, Battista shared strategies his firm takes during times of high claims volumes from NatCats.

“We came up with a process where we actually ‘geo-fence,’ if you will, or look up all our clients in the postal codes that are affected. We will have [customers] call in…and we’ll explain the claims process, what they can expect, make sure they have a claim, and get it recorded.”

Assigning one handler to all the incoming claims for a particular disaster is another way of approaching the high volume.

For example, the Toronto floods in 2013 cost more than $80 million in insured damage after record levels of rain hit the city at once, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC).

“In the case of the Toronto floods, we had so many [claims] that we actually assigned those claims to one particular person in the office, really just to keep in contact with clients,” said Battista.

Hand-holding clients through difficult periods is crucial for improved customer service, he said. “It was really important for us as a brokerage to really explain to that client, walk them through it, and make sure that they understood, because the biggest problem from a customer service perspective is they’re not knowing the next step.”

The industry also has an opportunity to service small claims clients — who are vulnerable to lacking attentive service — through automation.