Playbook, insurance broker
What can be adjusted, and the request that is something else
The documents are the barrier here. A wording runs to many pages of dense type, the schedule is the part that decides things and carries the smallest print in the pack, and the statement of fact has to be read and checked by the customer despite being the least readable thing in it. All of that is adjustable. The request that usually arrives alongside, letting a son or a daughter deal with the policy, is not an adjustment at all.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for accessibility requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The material a customer has to engage with is unusually long and unusually consequential, so a format adjustment here is not about comfort, it is about whether somebody can check that what was recorded about them is right.
- The duty to check the statement of fact and correct it does not move because the format changed, so an adjustment has to preserve the checking step rather than replace it with a summary.
- A fact find is a conversation with a great many questions in it, and adjustments to how it is conducted, more time, the questions in advance, a break, cost almost nothing and are rarely offered.
- Somebody asking for a relative to handle the policy is asking to change who may act on it, which is an authority question with its own requirements and must never be granted as a kindness.
How it arrives
- can i get the policy documents in large print
- is there an audio version of the wording
- can my daughter deal with the policy for me
- i need longer to go through the questions
- can you send the schedule in a format my reader can handle
- is your office accessible if i come in
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Which formats you can actually supply, and how long each takes | Large print, an accessible electronic file, audio, and who produces them. List only what you can genuinely provide, because an unfulfilled promise here is worse than a plain not at the moment. |
|---|---|
| How a fact find can be adjusted | Extra time, questions sent in advance, a break part way, a preferred contact method. These cost the firm almost nothing and they are the adjustments people most often do not know they can ask for. |
| Your position on somebody acting for a customer | What you require before another person may deal with a policy, whether a one off conversation differs from ongoing authority, and how it is recorded. Write it as a procedure, because it will be quoted back at you. |
| The premises, described rather than labelled | Steps at the entrance, which floor the meeting rooms are on, parking near the door, and whether a meeting can be held elsewhere. A word like accessible gives somebody nothing they can plan around. |
The reply
Yes to the documents, with limits worth knowing: the formats we can produce and how long each takes are listed [1], and it is worth asking early because a renewal has a date on it. If the questions are the difficulty rather than the paper, they can be sent in advance or taken at your pace [2]. One thing I should be straight about: having a relative deal with the policy for you is not an adjustment we can simply apply, it is a change to who is authorised, and there is a short process for it [3]. Leave me your name and an email and somebody will set it up.
It agrees first and qualifies second, because a person asking this has usually been refused somewhere before. The timing point is practical rather than procedural. And it separates the authority request out plainly, in those words, because agreeing to it informally is how a firm ends up taking instructions from somebody with no standing to give them.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks for a document in a particular format, asks for the process to be adjusted, or asks for another person to act for them.
I cannot arrange a format or add anybody to a policy from here. Leave me your name, an email and what you need, and the team will confirm what they can produce and how long it takes.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never promise a format the firm has not confirmed it can produce, because somebody may wait on it right through a renewal.
- Never agree that a relative can deal with the policy, since that is an authority decision with a procedure behind it.
- Never offer a summary of a wording as an alternative to an accessible version, as a summary is not the document and the customer is entitled to the document.
- Never describe the office as accessible in a single word, and never state a feature of the building the firm has not published.
Questions
- Can it produce a plain English version of a wording?
- No, and it must not attempt one. A wording says what it says, and a paraphrase that drops a condition is precisely the failure an accessible version exists to prevent. It can point at any summary document the insurer already issues.
- Relatives ring on behalf of older clients constantly. What should it say?
- That there is a process and it is short, then hand over. The assistant sounds unhelpful for about one sentence, which is a great deal better than a firm acting on instructions from somebody it never authorised.
- Is a widget any use to somebody who finds documents difficult?
- Sometimes more use than a phone call, because it can be read slowly and read again. The limit is that it only quotes what you have published, so the value depends entirely on the format list and the adjustment process existing as documents.
Keep reading
- Everything for a insurance brokerProduct information is safe ground. A personal recommendation is regulated, and no assistant may confirm whether a loss is covered.
- Handling accessibility requests in generalTwo different things arrive as one message. A published accessibility statement answers the first. The second is a request, and it needs a person.
- Coming to a broker for the first timeThe first conversation is a fact find with a duty attached. What to have ready, what the broker must tell you, and who it searches.
- Coverage questions, and the only safe shape for the answerThe one question a broker's assistant can never answer, and the reply that still leaves the customer better off than silence would.
- Quote requests at a broker, and the underwriting that stands in the wayPremiums come out of underwriting, not out of a price list. What the assistant collects instead, and how it keeps an indication from becoming a quote.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.