Loyalty is a word I do NOT associate with insurance
ACCOUNTANT Asif Bhatti is a scathing critic of the way insurance companies treat existing customers.
For the past ten years, the 49-year-old from Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, has always changed home insurer when cover has come up for renewal.
He says that not one of the insurers he has bought cover from over the years – including Axa, Direct Line and HSBC – have tried hard to keep his custom.
It has meant him shopping around for an alternative provider and always finding a rival prepared to undercut the renewal quote provided by his existing provider. His home cover, for buildings and contents, is currently with Together Insurance, some 30 per cent cheaper than the cover offered by his last insurer.
Asif and wife Simone have two children – Zara, 12, and nine-year-old Eisa – and they have never once made a home insurance claim. Asif says: ‘I now have in my diary the date when I need to shop around. But it seems perverse that you can be a good customer, not claim and then be almost pushed away. Loyalty is a word I do not associate with insurance.’
The Chartered Insurance Institute will tomorrow launch a ‘public trust index’, aimed at gauging consumer confidence in insurance. Initial findings indicate that while insurers are doing a good job overall in settling claims, the disparity between the pricing for new and existing customers remains a consumer bugbear and is eroding trust.
Its research does not tackle the issue of price optimisation.