When I came to the Academy of Insurance, I am not sure that I knew what to expect. I didn’t expect all that came along with it. I knew that we would have a calendar of webinars and training events through the year. I expected that there might be (eventually) some writing involved. Eventually turned into now and since this is still Insurance Careers Month, let me tell a few stories about interactions with customers that I’ve seen in my insurance career. Let me know if you still think that insurance is a boring career field.
As a commercial underwriter, I didn’t often get calls from the insured. We expected the agents to call whenever there was a question or coverage or eligibility. One day, a peer got a phone call from an insured. The secretary for a volunteer fire department had a question about eligible drivers.
“We have a volunteer and we want to know if you would approve them as a driver.”
“We generally leave driver choice up to you. If the driver is acceptable according to your internal driver policy, we would accept them. Is there a specific issue that we can help with?”
“We have a volunteer that’s been driving for us for years now. He would like to know if he can still drive even if he doesn’t wear his seat belt.”
“We do recommend that drivers wear their seat belts, besides that, in most states drivers are required to wear their seat belts.”
“He used to wear it, but because of some health issues, he can’t wear it anymore. You see, he has a morphine pump and the seat belt gets in the way of the pump and irritates him.”
“So, you’re concerned that he’s not wearing his seat belt, but he’s driving with a morphine pump giving him a constant dose of morphine. Isn’t that the bigger issue…”
Turns out the chief was hoping we wouldn’t like it so that he could blame the insurance company for not letting that driver drive any more. Blame me and please get this guy off the road.
You get to meet interesting people in insurance.
One time I received a phone call from one of our loss control representatives. We would send them out to inspect a new customer’s operations. They would take pictures of the buildings and equipment and take video so that there was record of what they had when we wrote the policy. It’s a way of helping them to catalog their property. We would also inspect for possible liability issues.
This particular day, the loss control representative called me to walk me through the details of a particular inspection. This had never happened before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. We started walking through the inspection and much of it seemed normal. The insured had a clean looking garage. I noted that they didn’t have enough smoke detectors, but that’s a common problem. Then I saw a picture of the men’s room.
“Why is there a bed in the men’s room?”
“One of the employees moved his father in because he was evicted from his home.”
“So, he’s sleeping in the men’s room? Where’s the rest of his stuff?”
“Look at the pictures of the back office.”
“You have to be kidding me…”
I could tell you stories of houses that people insured as private homes but that’s not exactly what they were. People set up assisted living facilities in homes in neighborhoods. People have unlicensed and undeclared beauty shops (fully set up with hair wash sinks, the big blow dryers, and nail station) in the back room.
A career in insurance brings to in front of people who are having their best days and their worst days. You get to celebrate in the good days and you get to help make it better in the worst days. You might even get to advise someone not to drive an ambulance while on morphine.
Topics Underwriting
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