Knowledge integration
Transparency in the insurance market is a hot topic, but what about Corporate Social Responsibility through Knowledge Integration?
In August 1984, our dga (Van Ommen) published a highly critical article in the trade press entitled :
"FADED GLORY". In it, a large number of abuses were exposed. Not to complain, but to warn that it is high time to turn the tide.
No progress has actually been made since 1984. Scandal upon scandal struck the insurance industry.
The SER had to hand over its duties to the AFM.
Broker covers killed the SER.
The Insurance Chamber had to hand over its tasks to DNB.
Fraud at Stichtse Glas, Reliance, Frisia with its single-premium policies and the Vie D'or killed the Insurance Chamber.
But it remains to be seen whether changing the guard can lead to the intended result:
Transparency, Product Control and Solvency.
Where there is a will, there is a way, but if one does not have the will, other ways are sought and found.
AFM and Finance are also committed to transparency regarding the remuneration of intermediaries.
With regard to forms of insurance such as money lending and savings products/pensions, it is forbidden to still
attribute closing commissions in the consumer price.
Intermediaries have to budget and calculate their own costs for some products.In respect of non-life insurance, this is also desirable but not practicable, it said.
The insurance industry has companies (globally and thus also in the Netherlands) with all kinds of useful and useless functions :
- insurance companies
- insurance exchanges such as in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Lloyd's of London, Quatar, Miami.
- insurance brokers on the exchange
- authorised agents who usually represented foreign insurers
- service providers acting as postal banks when clients of intermediaries took out policies with insurers
with whom intermediaries do not do business.
- franchise companies, in which intermediaries join so that they can carry certain products that have been awarded by the
insurers to those chains.
- intermediaries/insurance advisers
Double work ?
And all those companies use a computer system and exchange data, useful or not.
In between all those computerised administrations, there are again countless companies that are busy pushing information back and forth via protocols.
Because everyone has to defend their own interests, there is no centralised approach and it all costs a lot of money for which the consumer has to foot the bill.
Commerce
Insurers prefer to communicate only the positive aspects of their products and they leave it to advisers to find out where the drawbacks are. We have solved this through the Quality Scan and the Quality Centre.
Customer knowledge
Advisers know a lot, but their advice is customer-centric. They are not the insurer's adviser!
Sometimes advisers are guilty of cheating insurers. This is even worse than bad advice.
Bad communication by insurers and customers withholding information from insurers have major consequences and these have to be fought out again in Radar or in court : and that is again bad for the good name of the insurance company! Example of lying and cheating : LINK. Just immagine it was your staff!
In short : high time to put our house in order and so we set to work in 2007 to develop a whole new vision that would be much, much better for both insurers and intermediaries but, above all, for consumers.
The starting point for this is :
1) Transparency by all parties involved (and therefore also by the consumer who often does not even know that he has concealed something)
2) CSR
3) 100% Efficiency (so no more duplication of effort)
4) Maximum management information for insurers
5) Maximum commitment of intermediaries to offer and register products correctly
6) Maximum result for the Consumer
- the price of insurance products of all insurers can be reduced by up to 50% so that he will be only too happy to pay the costs of the
mediation and advisers will pay
- better products, because the advisers are only able to advise optimally if the disadvantages of products are also clearly
displayed.
- cheaper products because advisers will then also be free to separate the "good" risks from the "bad" ones:
after all, consumer interests come first !
- Insurers share their knowledge with intermediaries
- The intermediaries share the knowledge with the advisers
- The mediators share their knowledge with the advisers.The advisers share their knowledge with the intermediaries
- The intermediaries share that knowledge with the insurers
AND KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION IS A FACT...............
Over the past year, we have given a number of key people a sneak preview of this website. They were allowed a glimpse into the kitchen to think along, to be critical.
The result is that there is now not only an alternative vision on the table, but also a full automation that will allow the transformation from the "old" state to a new one to be fully realised.