I write a lot about insurance issues and not only here on my blog. I sometimes write posts and articles just on LinkedIn and LinkedIn Pulse. For example, below is a LinkedIn post I made today in spontaneous response to an article I read at InsuranceThoughtLeadership.com. If you’re interested in my LinkedIn commentary, below are links where you can follow me there:

So, here is the post I just made on my LinkedIn page….

I just read this article:

“How Fine Print Ruins Customer Experience“

From the article:

“According to an Accenture study, only 27% of consumers consider insurers to be trustworthy. And Deloitte found that only 11% of people have strong trust in insurance agents and brokers.”

I’ve seen studies like this over the years. What is usually missing from these statistics is the Q&A related to the insurer or agent OF the consumer. If you ask a consumer if THEIR insurance agent is trustworthy, the numbers are almost always WAY higher than those above.

The same is often true of politicians…when the question just references “politicians,” polls imply that they are universally despised, But ask people what they think of a politician they voted for and the statistics are completely different.

As has been said, “Torture numbers and they’ll confess to anything.”

But, back to the article…before you continue, I encourage you to review it:

“How Fine Print Ruins Customer Experience“

The driving force behind insurance policy evolution is litigation and regulation where the difference in coverage, according to the courts, can be the tense of a verb or a punctuation mark.

Berkshire just came out with a policy called “THREE” that combines property, business income, general liability, auto, professional liability, workers compensation, and cyber liability (I’m probably forgetting something) insurance…IN THREE PAGES. And that’s going to be clearer to business owners as to what is or isn’t covered?

Inarguably, the most important “customer experience” is the one that takes place at claim time. Insurance policies are complex, legal contracts whose terms and conditions have often been interpreted over decades. And the reality is that virtually no consumers read them…far too many insurance practitioners don’t even read them. I doubt that reducing dozens of pages to 2-3 pages will change that metric. When it comes to contract understandability, less is not necessarily more.

And, by the way, there is no such thing as “fine print” in regulated insurance policies.

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Bill Wilson

Founder at InsuranceCommentary.com
One of the premier insurance educators in America on form, coverage, and technical issues; Founder and director of the Big “I” Virtual University; Retired Assoc. VP of Education and Research from Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America. Reprint Request Information