Typical Problems and their cause:
Premium surprises at Audit:
These usually occur at audit. Agents do not get involved in the audit process. In fact, once an agent makes his sale the presence of any interest in ultimate cost is usually very low or non-existent. Workers Compensation has to be monitored and supervised continually as does any other policy that has an adjustable feature. Insureds are always vulnerable to their Workers Compensation audits where knowledge of the system is critical to what you pay.
Claim Declinations or Reservation of rights
These are more common these days than ever before. If an insurance company sees a way to decline a claim it usually will. While it is not possible to predict every eventuality, instructions to an agent and the ensuing results are very important to the process and can easily affect a claim situation negatively if not enough attention is given to the initial process. Moreover, any doubtful claim has to be handled very carefully to avoid negative results that usually result in a financial loss.
Excessive Premium
It is unfortunate but very factual to say that NO insured can know whether the premiums they are paying are the cheapest around. To know that you have to be an expert in what is going on in the market place and who is doing business with whom. It is a common misconception that all agents have the same markets. They do not. Furthermore, the landscape changes regularly with different agent’s changing their associations and markets moving around.
It is also a fact that some agents, not all, trade on the ignorance of their customer. After all, how would a customer be in a position to check anything that an agent communicates unless that customer was an expert in insurance? Buying insurance truly is a “Buyer Beware” situation.
Very few corporations employ experts to manage their insurance program. First and foremost, there are few experts around to hire and secondly the cost would be an issue. Only an expert can properly buy an insurance program and only an expert can maintain it exclusively to the insureds benefit.