This blog illustrates the work we do in the background getting the best outcome for your claims, and just how easy it is to be fooled into parting with money through cyber crime.
One of our clients had the misfortune of having to put two claims in at the same time, one business and a personal claim. Such is life, and unfortunately sometimes life throws the double whammy. Lucky for our client that Lisa, one of our claims specialists, is on the case to smoothly handle both claims and take the stress and time-consuming chasing and follow ups away from our client.
This is a professional lady, with a family, a business to run and very little time on her hands. The last thing she needed was to deal with two insurance claims departments.
BREAKING GLASS
The personal claim was concerning a window at the top of her 4-storey house, in a very inaccessible position at the side of the house. The window suddenly shattered for no apparent reason. This might sound like a reasonably straight-forward claim, but there were a few elements that could have caused complications. A window suddenly shattering without reason is not always easy to explain to an insurer who needs to know that it’s not just a faulty design, before agreeing to pay the claim.
Lisa handled all this, her knowledge and expertise of handling such cases means she can cut to the chase, furnish the insurer with everything they need to complete the case without undue reference to busy professionals. Not only that, Lisa kept our client informed all along and advised her how to make the property safe until the replacement window was installed.
SPECIALIST REQUIREMENTS
Because of the type of glass in the window, it involved liaising with a specialist glass company, making sure the replacement window was of the same standard as the shattered one, and getting quotes in order to satisfy the insurer. The first estimate was too high – Lisa was mindful of the fact that these are very expensive windows, a specialist type of glass, awkward to install and huge! Being able to demonstrate to an insurer, we have the best for the right standard, means everyone was happy. Had Lisa not done all of this work it would have delayed the claim for a long time, as insurers take an age to do their own checks.
Lisa communicated with the glass company and the client liaising over the road-closure so that the glass could be safely lifted, by a crane, in to place. This involved numerous calls, emails and other “paperwork” to ensure the glass was fitted at a time convenient for our client. Lisa even considered that the replacement should take place after winter during the Spring months – when the weather is better to replace windows.
THAT EMAIL WAS FROM YOU WASN’T IT……..?
In conjunction with the personal claim, Lisa was also dealing with the client’s Business claim – A cyber fraud. Unfortunately, this is something that is happening all too frequently in the online world. You will often see my posts about it on social media and I have written blogs about it, here is one on Cyber Risks. We all need to be vigilant and alert to these nasty criminal activities.
The story for our client was that an email landed in her accounting staff’s in-box requesting payment of an invoice, it looked like it was from her boss, our client, however it was a fake email. The staff member was fooled and promptly paid the invoice and over £11,000 was now winging its way to a cyber criminal’s account!
Our fast-acting client contacted her bank to stop payment, immediately she was made aware of this – at that point the money hadn’t landed in the destination account. However, banking red tape and bureaucracy meant that even though the red flag had been raised in time, the money wasn’t stopped from leaving our client’s account and landed in the destination cyber fraud criminal account. So much for the banks promise to help. Here’s a link to our webinar where we explain that the banks are blatantly lying about their “charter” which promises to assist with these payments. They are more of a hindrance than a help when these things happen.
A SAFE PAIR OF HANDS
Lisa is a safe pair of hands, she handled this claim along with the other, contacting the bank, insurers, staff, plus informing our client all along the way by phone and email. Lisa made sure she knew exactly what the insurer needed and gathered all the necessary information to make the claim run smoothly, which it did. Our client was delighted when Lisa’s hard work meant that the full amount was covered.
Lisa handled in excess of 150 calls and 60 emails whilst dealing with these claims taking a considerable amount of stress and extra work away from our already busy client. It shouldn’t take that much yet it does. C’est la vie. Rather than co-ordinate claims and their handlers themselves, all our clients need to do is call Lisa, yet they hardly ever did on this occasion because Lisa was calling them!
TOP TIP:
Never take at face value an email requesting payment, always, always get checks in place and phone the person on their usual number, not the one on the fake email, or arrange some other form of authentication. Staff can be retrained and cultures changed in order to reduce risk. Whilst insurers do pay out, there is always an excess so prevention is better than cure.
WRAP UP:
Stressful times can be made worse by non-stop requests for information. Sometimes insurers and their representatives make people feel like they’re doing something wrong. They do it to us too when we have claims to report so we have developed a process that ensures our clients aren’t made to feel bad when asking for what they deserve,
