While Cirencester Friendly’s focus has been growing talent from within, the protection sector as a whole may need to come together to train the next generation of claims assessors.
This is according to the mutual’s director of distribution Alan Waddington and CEO Andy Morris, who sat down with Health & Protection.
Last month the Protection Distributor’s Group (PDG) halved the number of insurers making the cut for its latest claims charter when compared with the previous year, with PDG chairman Neil McCarthy challenging the industry to train more claims assessors.
It’s an approach favoured by Cirencester Friendly with Waddington telling Health & Protection that the mutual has looked inward to develop talent.
“Instead of having to go to market to find claims assessors and fill vacancies because somebody’s left or we’re expanding the team, we’ve very much adopted a grow our own philosophy and identifying people from our operational teams, customer service teams, administration teams who have got that ability to work with our members – the policy holder at the point of claim, support them with their needs,” Waddington explained.
“It’s people that have that sympathy and empathy that people need and developing them through their career path into the claims journey.”
And Waddington added this process has worked for three of the firm’s income protection claims assessors just this year.
“We expect to do more as time moves on,” Waddington continued, “So it does a number of things for us – one, it helps keep valuable and loyal employees, it creates that career path but also you start feeling part of something – not just a job, as part of their life and as a culture.
“But as a mutual, we’re very much about paying claims so bringing people into that claims journey from an employee point of view, they believe in what we’re trying to.
“So it’s not about finding ways to not pay a claim. It’s about finding ways to pay a claim and then support our members through that claims journey, helping them to return to work etc, because that’s what we’re here to do.”
Cirencester Friendly’s CEO Andy Morris (pictured), who is also vice chairman of the Association of Financial Mutuals, said the challenge of developing claims assessors is an issue for the whole industry.
“Across the industry, I do accept that that is a challenge so I’m open to ideas that others may have in terms of what that looks like because ultimately this is a set of skills that the whole industry needs,” Morris said.
“So in that context, if it’s on a non compete basis, then you’re talking about training. You’re talking about facilities to enable that.
“So from Cirencester’s point of view, from the AFM’s point of view, we’re always looking at ways to collaborate.”
In the spirit of that collaboration, which is a key theme for the AFM this year, Morris added an industry wide training programme could offer a possible solution to talent shortfalls.
“Is there a collective way that we can pool that kind of talent? and I’m thinking here not necessarily for the hiring of people, more from the training and development of people and have a programme in the same way that other professional areas do,” Morris continued.
“I’m an accountant by background – accountancy has had that for a very long period of time.
“So if you think of other skilled areas, having them develop a training programme to achieve that would certainly be an area worth exploring.”
