Insurers “blaming everyone else,” says broker

by Donald Horne | 30 Jan 2015

 One outspoken broker added his voice to another on the attitude insurance companies take when it comes to rising claims costs.

“Insurers are blaming everyone else and not taking responsibility,” Mike O’Grady, broker/owner of O’Grady & Associates Insurance Services in Tillsonburg, Ont., told Insurance Business. “Griswald nailed it!”

O’Grady was referring to Griswald G., who commented on the article ’15 per cent target for Ontario auto does not compute’ that insurers need to “clean up their own delay/deny system and stop relying on slashing benefits” to balance the books.

“Some insurers are spending four times what the claim is worth on legal defense costs to deny legitimate claims,” wrote Griswald G. in the Comments section of Insurance Business, “and now insurers are upset when they have to pay the legal costs of the claimant who waited years and spent a ton of money holding the insurer accountable.”

The comments were levelled at the Insurance Bureau of Canada’s Barb Taylor, who had some tough talk for those elements that were driving up the costs in Ontario’s auto insurance sector.

“In Ontario average AB (accident benefit) costs were over $31,000. Compare this with Alberta and Atlantic Canada, where average AB Claims were around $8,600 and $3,700, respectively,” said Taylor, before an audience of brokers and insurance industry execs at the Crystal Ball in Toronto, Ont. “Clearly, there is something wrong with the Ontario system.”

The rising costs in AB and BI (bodily injury) show that those in the ‘car accident business’ – such as personal injury lawyers and med-rehab providers – are doing what they have done many times before: working around the latest reforms to find new ways to maximize pay-outs, said Taylor.

But for Griswald G., the true cost of rising claims can be laid almost squarely at the feet of insurers.

“Denying the claims of injured people costs more than adjusting claims by way of over-assessing the injury,” he wrote, “until the insurer finds the right assessor that will deny the injury even exists.”

Source: http://www.insurancebusiness.ca/news/insurers-blaming-everyone-else-says-broker-187616.aspx