underwriting | TheInsuranceBill

I’ve had my own run of claims as well as some others going on lately. Fortunately, an occurrence that could have been claimed, sort of, and a basic “How to handle a claim post”

Both are still accurate and both are somewhere between far from the truth and not enough. I’ve long thought insurance functions as much like a credit card or bank loan than what people expect from insurance. But, maybe I’m also abusing or misusing the word dynamic a bit.

Is your insurance re-underwritten year to year? Sort of but in my experience, not completely. See it is quickly reviewed and assessed for negative things like claims. Sure, you may not see a surcharge for that accident but look closer. See, you have a tier assigned to you and if that changes you’ll also likely see your rate go up. Hence, dynamic underwriting….but not really.

But I was married this year or completed college this year or bought a house this year. Don’t those things help? Sure, sort of. But, not completely in the live environment. See, adding a second car and a spouse will find you multi-car savings but doesn’t typically adjust for your spouse or partners credit score or college degree that you don’t have.

An agent needs to know this and also needs to know the how and when to adjust. But, as with all things, there is a cost associated with this. The company does not bear the burden of keeping a customer. In fact, many of their actions make you wonder if they actually want to keep the customer.

So, is it dynamic underwriting or situational dynamic or something else? So it is much more situational dynamic. In other words, we’ll be dynamic when it is convenient for us. Yup. That is why when David asks about filing a claim I have to have a drawn-out explanation that ends with, I really have no idea if it is a good idea or not. You really just have some sort of “loan” that sometimes functions like insurance, other times functions as a credit card with 6 months interest-free and no payments that you better read the fine print on.

Until an insurance company wants customers from top to bottom in the organization, this is unlikely to change.

Yup. A couple of times a month we run into something similar. Long time, likely profitable, customer not exactly being appreciated https://theinsurancebill.com/?p=199

Truth is, I’ll likely be in a similar spot about 10 months from now. But how can that happen? You had two NOT AT FAULT accidents. Exactly But, because of a lot of things, including a call center order taker and some weak regulations, one driver did not have enough coverage. That means I need to use my coverage *sigh*.

Lots of bigger questions, but the one that pops into my mind is the “accident forgiveness” conflict. My children, and maybe yours, have accidents all the time. Forgiving accidents is just part of what you do for children. Our employees make mistakes all the time. We fix them and move on, we don’t change their salary because of them. But yet, in insurance, it seems to be acceptable to pay a company to forgive an accident. Huh?

Don’t most consumers forgive actuaries, executives and underwriters on a daily basis for abusing price optimization, miscalculation and poor performance? They even willingly but maybe unwittingly continue to pay premiums.

Times are a changing, time for a change.