No place like home

You have raised some difficult issues for which I can only give the briefest of responses here.

The issue is more of a commercial relationship one than a regulatory one. Depending on your trading relationship with the insurers concerned, you can discuss and review service standards, how the contact centre is adversely affecting your business and costing it money. Your ultimate sanction could be to cease trading with the offending insurer(s), but I suspect that could be an equally unpalatable decision.

From a regulatory standpoint, insurers are as bound by the Treating Customers Fairly requirement, as you are. Whether you look at it from a market counterparty or customer perspective, they are bound to treat their customers fairly and, in this instance, you are the customer.

Consider posing the question to someone suitably senior as to how they can square-off the reality of your experiences against the TCF requirements?

The difficulty is that a significant part of the financial services market is utilising this type of service. Of more than 20 years in broking, in the four years that I have been involved in compliance, I have noted an increasing dissatisfaction among many intermediaries regarding service levels.

Everyone seems to have story to tell about misunderstandings, language difficulties or just poor service, both in the broker and in the direct client sectors. The reality is that insurers have made a huge investment into these call centres, cutting their UK-based costs considerably as a result, and are more interested in delivery of acceptable performance to their shareholders than case-by-case grumbles from intermediaries or the insuring public.

For every piece of business that they lose, someone else's lost business is looking for a home. Consequently, the concept will continue to prosper.

The insurers will provide statistics to 'prove' that service delivery is at an acceptable level and that training is paramount. Brokers at the coalface know the real story, but I am afraid that, if these insurers are important to you or your client, your options are limited.

There is a groundswell of concern and perhaps, in the medium term, the Financial Services Authority will take a closer interest in whether the broker, as a customer, is being treated fairly by the level of service and documentation delivery from these sources.