The role of protection underwriting is not to catch agents or customers out, but to understand any inconsistencies in their NHS records and to improve confidence in these products.
The ultimate aim is about maintaining rather than removing cover.
This is according to Ed Trueman, senior underwriting manager at HSBC Life, who was participating in the Protection Review’s ProtectX event this morning.
Trueman explained technological advancements have meant processes have moved from underwriters having to endorse every customer application regardless of age, protection, application, term or a clean bill of health to a simpler process.
Now clean applications where a customer that has no disclosures can be accepted at that point of sale – and through a discussion with their agent, that client can walk away that day, or the day of the appointment, with their policy documents.
Creating trust
He added complex underwriting processes with decision trees now ask effective questions to elicit information on serious medical conditions and complex histories, yet can still provide a customer with an application at that point of sale.
“Just to put myself in the customer’s shoes, I ask myself and my team to look at how we should treat the customer in our assessment of applications and how we build rules to say okay, you’re going to have that discussion with an agent today about really quite sensitive medical information.
“We don’t want a customer or an agent to walk away and feel uncomfortable and think, hold on, I’ve just relayed my life to you but you don’t trust me. You need to see medical notes and NHS records about my history.
“We’re moving away from that and rightly so. And we’re moving away from that to say we trust you. We understand your medical conditions and we’re happy to offer you a protection product.”
Not trying to catch customers or agents out
But in moving onto customer non-disclosure, Trueman maintained insurer underwriting checks are not there to catch a customer out.
“It’s not to catch an agent out. It’s to ensure that as insurers we are conducting ourselves correctly.
“Our application journeys are concise. Our application questions are simple without complex terminology, so customers have confidence in what they are then disclosing.
“So they then have confidence in their product when they make a claim.
“If it finds an inconsistency in a customer’s NHS records against their application form, we don’t say a customer’s non-disclosed. We don’t say a customer’s being fraudulent. We try to understand the customer’s inconsistencies.
“And that will be through directly conversing with a customer. And from those interactions with customers, we will then seek to give the customer a decision on what we feel is the correct approach.
“And this decision will be to try and keep the customer’s protection product.”
Maintaining cover
Indeed, Trueman added, insurers are not trying to remove cover.
“We are trying to understand why customers’ NHS records and application processes have inconsistencies,” he continued.
“We are actively looking to maintain cover and converse with customers to ensure people that when we maintain cover, they can have confidence in the event of a claim with their protection policy.”