In an interview with Insurance Business, Caroline Barr, chair of BIBA’s Access to Insurance Committee, has called for brokers to do more to ensure people have access to the peace of mind insurance can bring.
‘Peace of mind is what you are buying when you buy an insurance policy,’ Barr said. ‘You know that, if the worst happens, you’re protected and your family is protected. What we’re trying to do is make sure as many people as possible have access to that peace of mind.”
Barr argued that brokers need to do more to press technology into service to help them meet the challenge of matching people with vulnerabilities to an appropriate provider.
‘We’re not going to be able to insure everybody for everything,’ she said’ ‘but, for most people, for most things, we can – through our signposting service. From April,’ she noted, ‘it will be obligatory for firms who cannot provide travel insurance at a price reflective of the risk that’s presented by a pre-existing condition, to signpost the customer.’
She observed that is is rare within the financial services sector for providers to interact regularly with customers, face to face or over the phone, ‘because it’s all done from call centres.’
By contrast, she said, ‘our brokers who deal with your average person in the street meet with their customers, and they can get to know them really well. They can understand vulnerabilities, and they can serve them much better than many other institutions across the sector.’
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