Would you go to a brain surgeon who had a reputation for being super-fast? How about an oncologist who will determine your exact cancer treatment to save you? How about an investment advisor who will make a snap decision of where all your money should be invested?
I thought about these questions while reading an article — Insurance World Championships: How Fast Can Companies Get You Homeowner Insurance? — sent to me by Merlin Law Group attorney Dan Veroff who is in our San Francisco office. The article noted:
Getting the best homeowner insurance fast is important. Fortunately for you, as our experiment shows, more and more carriers are making it easier to get you covered. While we found that Lemonade, Hippo, and Geico were the most efficient, we are certain that in time the others will likely catch up, giving consumers like you even faster and better options to choose from.
Why is it important to get the best insurance fast? What is the best insurance? How does a policyholder get the best insurance without first speaking with an insurance agent who first obtains a full understanding of all the risks the policyholder faces and the circumstances of that person’s finances?
The answers to these questions are obvious to anybody in the insurance business. The insurers selling their insurance quickly on-line are doing a huge disservice to the insurance product and industry. This race to sell more and make more profit rather than to honestly provide the minimum service to properly determine the needs and requirements of the insurance customer, is disgraceful.
Insurance is a serious financial product. The failure to properly insure can lead to financial disaster. Treating it as a commodity product is unconscionable. Today, many insurance executives do not seem to care and are in a race to the bottom to place profits above the quality truly required to properly sell the product to their customers. The knowledge, experience and human judgment of a quality insurance agent is never beaten by “fast.”
I recently stated in, Insurance Agents Play An Important Role In Everyday Life:
In an ever more affluent society, insurance becomes a more important product. Insurance allows people and businesses to finance risk and becomes an important aspect of everyday life. We cannot finance homes, cars, boats, planes, inventory, equipment, construction and virtually any commercial investment without securitization of the assets, revenues and expenses without insurance. Insurance agents sell these important financial products. The better they do their job, the greater the financial safety net is spread. I believe in the insurance product and support the efforts of insurance agents trying to be the best they can.
Those same executives who are selling “fast” are also in charge of overseeing the claims department. I think about that when people ask me “why” my law firm has grown to over 63 attorneys and “why” there are so many more insurance claim disputes.
Thought For The Day
“Stumbling is the fruit of haste.”
—Muhammad Ali
