CI insurance needs customer trust back
The critical illness (CI) insurance industry needs to rebuild consumer trust, claims Defaqto, after finding that consumers have felt let down over the last year.Defaqto says that CI insurers need to pull together as a whole to ensure that the British public can regain trust in the CI industry after a lot of bad PR over failed claims has appeared in the news recently.Although many rejected CI claims are due to customers themselves not disclosing necessary information or failing to read the small print on policies, experts at Defaqto believe that negative comments made by the financial ombudsman have added to the problem.In addition, the CI insurance firms failed to grasp the chance to improve its public image when the Association of British Insurers' statement of best practice was published. It also failed to inform independent financial advisers and consumers of improvements within CI, the financial research firm said. Defaqto principal consultant for protection, Nick Telfer, commented: "The future for critical illness hinges on rebuilding customer trust and developing products to meet the modern consumer's needs."I am concerned that neither the product development needed nor the education necessary to rebuild trust in the product is happening nearly quickly enough. This will inevitably lead to people being potentially left wide-open to the consequences of serious illness." Mr Telfer concluded: "The evidence from providers published statistics is that the vast majority of claims are paid and this is the message the industry needs to get across. We believe that rather than providers doing this individually, they need to work together through an industry sponsored campaign to promote the proposition to the consumer."
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