Regulation PS15-22 Insurance Add-ons - from a CX perspective

Ok, I love a good piece of regulation advice, I admit it.  I was recently reading FCA Policy statement PS15/22 (https://www.fca.org.uk/news/ps15-22-general-insurance-add-ons-market-study-remedies) on the sale of insurance market add-ons.  Ok, so reading policy statements might be everyone’s cup of tea (or double espresso) but actually some of the pieces covered are of interest from a CX perspective.  In summary it basically asks insurance firms to do the right thing when it comes to insurance add-ons, those little pieces of extra cover which have sometimes crept into a policy we buy without us asking or understanding what they are for. 

So far, so good.  The policy document naturally covers all the bases of concern as expressed by the industry as you would expect.  One of these is when an add-on is an add-on and when it’s a bundled product.  So if I am offered an add-on for free, that’s fine, but if I then go on to charge for this, I need to inform the customer.  Again, so far so good, from the customer perspective, organisations just need to have the ability to do the right thing by the customer, if I charge for an add-on (even if it’s just a token amount), I need to follow one set of rules, my agents should deal with a customer in a particular way, my systems need to handle them a certain way.  If it’s truly free, then another set of rules can apply. 

This raises an interesting ask of insurers.  In order to do the right thing, I need to make sure my systems are responsive enough to deal with consequences of small changes requested by marketing/sales/branches (delete where appropriate) not just front of house on a web portal or todays phone call, but all the way through the organisation.  Do this and you’ll truly have your customers interests at heart, rather than as an add-on.