On the road again
Here’s one for your diary: Hiscox’s Face to Face 2006 roadshow – ‘An extraordinary future’ – will offer brokers the chance to hear Hiscox’s news and views and meet one-to-one with our senior management, including UK Managing Director Steve Langan.
Don’t expect a day of dry lectures – it’s all aimed at driving growth for business and making sure Hiscox is providing you with all the tools you need to do that.
The event will adjourn to the great outdoors for an opportunity of ‘country pursuits’. It promises to be an inspiring
day – not to mention a great opportunity for networking.
The first Face to Face 2006 event takes place on 3 October in Leamington Spa. The tour then visits Hertfordshire, Hampshire, Bath, Colchester, Harrogate and Edinburgh before finishing up on 1 November in Dublin, with an evening event at the Guinness Storehouse.
Bigger, better, faster!
Underwriting centre beats expectations More brokers are set to be serviced
by the new Hiscox Underwriting Centre, based in Colchester. The Centre wasn’t due to take on these brokers until the end of September,
but because business is doing so
well and the processes are running
so smoothly, they joined in early September instead.
The Centre’s manager, Martin Linfield, explains: “We’ve had exceptionally positive feedback from the regional managers and because we took steps to recruit ahead, we had the capacity to take on the new business earlier than planned.
“The real measure of our success
is our turnaround times – on average we respond to brokers’ quotations within a day.”
The Underwriting Centre was launched this summer with the
aim of reducing business turnaround
times by 50 per cent – a target
that it has met. Transferring the servicing of brokers’ business to
the Centre has meant that
Hiscox’s regional offices now
have more capacity to provide
greater local support and
development for brokers.
According to Martin, the
Centre is set to grow and grow: “We are still recruiting and look
forward to taking on further
business later in the year.”
Dear Editor
In response to your question in the summer edition of Hiscox News as
to the role of brokers in the claims process, I think the best answer is this: we should ask the client what they want. Whether the client is a private individual or a corporate concern, they should be allowed to make the decision as to how the most important part of the insurance contract is honoured. If the client is comfortable dealing direct with an insurer (and only referring to the broker if there is a query or problem), they should follow that route. Conversely, they may value the broker’s role in chasing insurers, collating statistics and negotiating the best settlement of a claim on their behalf.
What clients do not like is having assumptions made on their behalf. The broker who offers options that enable their clients to make
choices that suit them will gather new clients
by recommendation, which is the easiest and
most effective method of growing a business.
Richard James
Berkeley Burke
• The editor says: Now there’s someone who believes in the old saying ‘The customer is always right’. Congratulations, Richard, you win a portable DVD player.