Insurance companies should consider three key areas to improve their products and services, Krystle Skelton, customer relations manager at Cura, has said.
Speaking at Protection Review’s Product X8 event yesterday (March 20), Skelton said the industry needed to “work together to ensure it is speaking to clients as individuals”.
During her session, Skelton said there were three main areas where Cura had noticed areas for improving the outcomes for protection clients:
- Providing cover for people who have used mental health support services as part of their workplace benefits
- A tendency among some insurers to cut out the intermediary during the claims process
- The need to improve the way in which statistics are reported.
She said clients should not be assessed as a general overview of their health and their conditions, specifically in the underwriting process.
“For many people, underwriting is as simple as answering a few health and lifestyle questions, and cover is provided,” she said.
She acknowledged that for some clients additional medical underwriting is required, but urged providers to be more constructive when dealing with clients and advisers.
Mental health
Touching on the issue of treating customers as individuals, rather than as the sum of their health problems, she said Cura had noticed an increase in underwriting for people suffering with mental health issues recently.
Skelton told delegates: "Mental health is a huge area and absolutely a sliding scale with major extremes.”
She identified clients on one side of this extreme - those who don’t suffer from mental health problems but have support services made available by their employer or through their protection - and urged providers to consider the individual.
As an example, Skelton highlighted an issue whereby a client who used mental health support services offered through their employer's insurance benefits was turned down for income protection, with the insurer citing mental ill health.
The client in question had signed up to support service from their employer.
She explained they were diagnosed with a long-standing medical condition when they were quite young and, although they don’t suffer from mental ill health in any way, they wanted to use the support offered by their workplace benefits for their wellbeing, and were provided with 20 counselling sessions.
However she warned that, due to this, the client’s income protection application cover was turned down due to the cumulative effects of the other medical conditions that were in place.
“The client was classed as suffering with their mental health, but they weren’t. The client had accessed a support service that we provide as an industry as a benefit and that was used against them."
She questioned whether this was the right thing for the industry to do.
Lack of communication
Skelton also turned her eyes to the other end of the protection journey and examined claims - highlighting how some providers have been cutting out the insurance broker/adviser at a critical point in a client's claims journey.
“It’s the responsibility of both the adviser and the insurer to help these clients as quickly and as smoothly as possible to ensure that a claim is paid,” she said.
