Insurance experts the world over, seem to agree that insurance agents have a crucial role to play in insurance. Even a session on IT strategies in a cost-cutting environment held recently under the title at ISOTECH 2009 a lot of discussions was focused on agents. The responsibility to improve relationships now likely falls on the underwriter. The role of the underwriter has changed over the past few years, in part due to technology. Gone are the eight-hour days of sitting at a desk. The availability of business rules and automated underwriting has freed up underwriters to take on somewhat unfamiliar responsibilities, one of which is the face and voice of the insurer to agents.
The relationship between the underwriter and agent is an important one, especially in the current market. It is difficult to grow business under the prevailing economic situation in Nigeria without relying on agents. This is more so as most of the insurance companies do not have offices in the remote areas. Experts believe that no matter the innovations which operators may put in place, agents cannot be easily wished away. According to Desmond Azuwike, general managers of ABC Agency and Brokers, you can introduce new products, but consumers may be demanding for simpler products; you can acquire other companies, but capital markets may be tight. Thus, establishing, maintaining and improving relationships with agents may be the answer, he says adding that companies that take innovative approaches are going to win.
While in the past, underwriters and technology may not have mixed well expert opinion says interest in underwriting technology, especially from personal lines, is growing. "What we’ve seen in talking to underwriters is that it is not really diminishing their intellectual capital or eliminating some of the processes. Rather, it is alleviating some of their manual tasks and enabling them to do more of the analytical work they really want to do.
Technology also is freeing up some of the underwriters’ time to become more involved in the sales process, "As you put this technology in place and offer some rules-based underwriting and pricing, you offload some of the template decisions to the other people in the enterprise and free up the underwriters to build relationships and sell more," he says.
More sophisticated technologies have hit the market over the past few years. Some of these technologies, according to experts enable collaboration between underwriters and agents. "The idea behind a workstation is to enable the underwriters to have a central location where they can access internal and external data needed in order to fully evaluate the risk," he says. "So, for example, on the property side, making it possible to calculate the insurance-to-value or probable maximum loss, or on the reinsurance side, doing some line-setting to determine retention levels for facultative reinsurance. Those are the types of things that these newer platforms provide in the commercial underwriter’s space.
"The balance between technology and relationships is critically important to our business"says Azuwike. He added that "the ease and dependability of technology enables our underwriters to focus their attention on the needs of the agency and the customer. It gives them more time to listen and solve real issues without the distraction that tedious, manual processes can create. It is a combination of science and humanity for us. We like to hear from our agencies; if they are not talking with us, then they are talking to our competitor."
He expressed that at ABC, they view the agent/underwriter relationship as critical. "Agents understand that underwriters are not going to be able to write everything that they send, but what agents really value is an underwriter who can work with the agent to move clients to where they want to be. If there’s not anything the underwriter can do on the price, they have to know the business well enough to suggest alternative coverage for different policy forms. Doing this effectively therefore, calls for a good knowledge of the industry, flexibility, willingness and availability.
Technology today has brought about a more purposeful work schedule which allows junior underwriters to do more of the keying and the processing, thereby giving relief to the senior members of the team to do more team-leading activities internally, or venturing out of the office to industry events and beyond. The present level of industry development has empowered underwriters to interact with agents more often. Such meeting created by this technological breakthrough, can be of tremendous advantage in the cross-selling and up-selling of products as well as product training.
Health Insurance; Why Insurers Place Limitations on HIV/AIDS Patients
Nigeria has a population of over 150 million people.  Out of this, the number of people that have tested positive to AIDS is staggering. Only recently, the Lagos state ministry of health reported that over 1 million people have tested positive in recent times. This is outside the old figures and the equally rising statistics in other states of the federation. Today, the number of people living with HIV or AIDS is awesome.
Insurance companies may be unwilling to cover a client who has tested positive to HIV or has a full blown case. AIDS is a silent and brutal infection and has a devastating effect on the financial lives of the sufferers. Research has shown that every single non-group medical claim policy issued in this country permanently excludes hospitalization expenses incurred due to any sexually-transmitted diseases including AIDS (although AIDS can be caused by other myriad factors other than unprotected sex.) It does not matter if you have a health insurance policy for years and didn’t claim a kobo for maybe a decade. If you get infected with the HIV virus in the 11th year, you will still not be covered for any hospitalization expenses incurred due to this.
Of course, to be fair to the insurance companies there are valid reasons for the exclusions of HIV/AIDS.  This is not unexpected especially against the background that 25 years ago, it was strange to hear of any such disease which has defied all medical researches aimed at finding a cure. The expenses required for treatment and eventual outcome is uncertain. The insurance industry depends on statistics about how many people get infected by the disease as well as the average cost for treating such a disease. This is also inclusive of eventual outcomes to guide in prizing appropriately. Therefore, since no reliable data is available on this, it is not surprising that it is excluded from the scope of coverage to avoid making the cost prohibitive. In fact, one of the insurance companies who spoke with this writer explained that while doing research on this subject, diabetics gave an interesting example whose insurance coverage under the health insurance plans in western countries, is variously accessed and usually very expensive.
Using this as an example, it can be clearly expressed that there is a second stage in health insurance where at least expensive insurance is available. Since HIV/AIDS is such a big issue the government would do well to create some kind of a common re-insurance pool just like it has done for certain categories of insurance such as oil and gas underwriting cover, without which the cost of covering this risk is likely to be prohibitive. Meanwhile, the insurance industry is doing its bit by having co-operative talks with some Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) under this subject. The result, though small, compared with the threats of the disease is at least providing some relief to victims, especially in meeting their treatment needs.
However, when insurance coverage for AIDS is viewed alongside other sexually transmitted diseases, one could understand why other STDs sometimes get the attention which AIDS patients don’t get. Statistical data on these lesser diseases is widely available and treatment protocols and outcomes are reasonably reliable like any other non sexually transmitted disease. Most insurance companies expressed concern that the reason this is so is because it flowed from previous mind-set that has been around for decades. At that time, the popular attitude was centered on the fact that somehow sexually transmitted diseases were immoral and hence anybody getting hospitalized due to them deserves not to be covered for the expenses. On the other hand, insurers probably felt that it was very expensive at that time to treat other sexually transmitted diseases which was perhaps acceptable.
It would be fitting if the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) and the National Assembly could have regulations aimed at revisiting the entire subject of permanent exclusions. By permanent exclusion, we mean diseases that will not be covered irrespective of how long you have been insured compared with standard permanent exclusions such as congenital defects, cosmetic or obesity treatments, non allopathic treatments which are allowed under various regulations. If any insurance company wishes to expand the list it should be allowed to do so as long as an easily understandable communication is made to a prospective consumer and his prior informed assent obtained.