Business without pain

Do you remember as far back as 1999 and the newly written Access to Justice Act? If you can you will recall that referral fees were banned at that point. Hence convoluted business models (translation: back door referral fees), the rise of Claims Direct and The Accident Group, severe malpractice (lawsuits still ongoing?) and grossly inflated ATE premiums - all of which led to satellite litigation, technical challenges and an industry meltdown.

In 2004 sanity prevailed and there was a change to the Solicitors referral code, allowing referral fees to be paid if handled in a transparent manner and this resulted in the most stable period that the personal injury sector has enjoyed for a long time and increased access to justice for the man in the street.

This, coupled with the regulation of Accident Management Companies resulted in a significant watershed in the personal injury market.

If referral fees are banned once again, we will undoubtedly see the return of back door payments, malpractice, legal challenges, back to the instability the market endured around the start of the Century.

The future threatened is completely out of kilter with the modern commercial world and is effectively one of legislation against market forces.

With the millions and millions of pounds spent by CMC’s and Solicitors on advertising, the public are more aware than ever of their rights and of the availability of access to justice. Jackson believes his changes are about access to justice, but he has monumentally failed to understand the market, apparently looking upon CMC’s as some sort of “parasitical leach” and let’s face it, who cares what happens to them?

In practice, referral fees paid by Solicitors to CMC’s merely form part of a marketing budget that the Solicitor would no doubt have spent on some other sort of marketing drive, such as advertising, but has chosen to spend the money with a CMC as there is a some form of a guaranteed result - so who’s decision is it to spend the marketing budget with an advertising agency or with a CMC?

So what is a referral fee? Certain people seem to use the term to imply some sort of dishonesty, but of course only when discussing those dastardly CMC’s!

It is also perplexing that the legal snobocracy fail to realise that the year is 2010 and that Solicitors are business people and are not following some kind of vocation. Operating a law firm on the basis that the public will find you through membership in MASS or APIL or by walking into your office on the High Street will result in failure, and the clever law firms know this. But also please note: No-one is holding a gun to the head of the poor Solicitor, being bullied by the awful CMC. They choose to pay a CMC because it is usually the most effective use of the marketing buck.

Furthermore, why is it that CMC’s are the parasites, but Solicitors are perceived as “seekers of truth and justice”? The marketing model for acquiring new clients is broadly the same yet Conservative Shadow Justice Minister Henry Bellingham, recently commented that if the Tories got into power, they now don’t want to ban referral fees (as they previously stated they would) as it is not a very capitalist thing to do, but in any event they didn’t want to ban them for those jolly good Solicitors, just for those awful, ambulance chasing CMC’s!!!!! Cheers Henry, there’s nothing like a free market economy to ensure a level playing field is there?

When the claims management market was regulated in 2004, advertising for clients in hospitals was mostly abandoned by CMC’s, only to be replaced at the speed of sound by Solicitors. Who are the ambulance chasers again?

The snobocracy also appears closer to home. I was recently having a few beers with some chaps from a law firm to whom we refer work to (I wont name names although I should!). Now this firm has conservatively had 500 Personal injury referrals from us in about 2 years and yes they pay us a fairly standard referral fee on a per case basis. It was all very convivial until the 3rd or 4th pint was downed, when the sneering dismissiveness began.

“All you do is fill a form in and send it on to us” “We do all the work” “All you do is sell claims on”

I was shocked to be honest.

Not because these people seemed ignorant of how much work and marketing spend goes into to securing a contract with an Insurance Broker for example, so that the phone rings and there is a client on the other end needing assistance after an accident. I already knew these were effectively house cats, sitting behind their desk being fed a steady diet of new clients each day, not knowing or caring how that new client magically appeared in front of them.

But the level of malevolence in which their diatribe was delivered took me by surprise. These “Solicitors” (they aren’t actually qualified) were more than happy to go and secure their pay rises on the back of bringing a commercial relationship to the Partners, happy to earn their bonuses on recovered legal costs, but actually they resent us as well.

But what does this all mean for those outfits at the other end of the referral process, especially Insurance Brokers?

Are they going to lose their valuable revenue stream of referral fees from their clients who have had non-fault accidents? If so does anyone care if this sends a few of them out of business?

Well yes we care! CMC’s and Insurance Brokers have a good understanding of what is required for the person who was actually involved in a non-fault accident needs, the actual brass tacks of sitting on the side of the road with a car you cant drive and 2 screaming kids in the back.

The Broker understands because that’s his client and he wants them to renew their policy with them next year, so he wants the client to have an A1 level of service, after all claims are the shop window of the Insurance process. The CMC understands because he wants the Broker to refer more clients to them, so who benefits? The client sat on the side of the road with 2 screaming kids that’s who!

At this point the Broker probably isn’t thinking about commissions or referrals, just the service that the client gets and there is the crux of the matter. For all the talk about referral fees being banned, yes some CMC’s will probably go to the wall and maybe even a few insurance brokers as well, but the real victims will be the policyholders who will have any choice removed from their decision making process and be left with a massive call centre to talk to and try and sort out a problem.

Misconception of Insurance

Many people, especially the older generation, subconsciously co-relate ‘Insurance’ to ‘Savings’. One reason for such misconception may be due to the way the tied agents solicit their business; agents sell whole life plan as a savings plan. This is not an argument that whole life plan cannot be used as a savings program but more of how this action embed the misconception of ‘Insurance’ with ‘Savings’. Another contributing factor could be the poor marketing and unavailability of pure insurance plan in the earlier days.

No doubt traditional product are more sales-oriented, it is giving way to new business models which focus on the customer, and aimed at providing total risk solutions and financial planning services.

Competition drives the insurers to innovate and create more solutions to enhance their existing suite of products. And one of it is Term plan.

Protection Solution - Term Plan

Term insurance is a very simple financial protection instrument. Consumer decides on the benefit amount they wished to be insured and the duration of protection. In return, consumer will pay a premium to the insurer who honour that agreement.

Besides life protection, consumer may choose to include critical illness, disability and personal accident benefit into the plan. Consumer will receive the payout if any of the events happened during the period of cover. The coverage is guaranteed as long as the policy is in-force, i.e. insurer receives the premium within the grace period.

The nature of Term insurance is only for pure protection purposes, thus it does not accumulate any cash value. Nevertheless, some insurer offers to return all premiums paid at the end of the cover at a higher premium.

At the end of the term, some companies offer the renewable option, which allows the policy owner to continue the coverage but at a higher premium. This new premium will be based on the age of renewal.

Term Insurance is a cost effective tool to hike your coverage as you only pay for the coverage you need. Example, if a 30 year old male requires a $500,000 coverage for 25 years, his premium will be calculated based on the average insurance rate from age 30 to age 55 instead of till age 99, which is how the whole life plan works.

Evolution of Term Insurance

The area of protection that a Term plan can covers is widening. Not only includes critical illness and disability, it is now extended to protect against the early stages of a critical illness and also multiple claims on the major critical illnesses. With some marketing packaging of early stages critical illness plan, you can also find female related critical illness plan in the market. All this can be a standalone term plan, or as a rider to another term and whole life plans.

Another interesting feature of a term plan is the mortgage insurance. This type of term plan decreases in the benefit amount, which is based on the mortgage interest, over the period of mortgage loan. At the last few years, the benefit amount is so low that many insurers actually waive off the premiums.

Who Is Suitable

Term insurance is suitable for individuals who wants to have some temporary high protection cover with the minimum premium.

i.e. In the event of pre-matured death, the breadwinner leaves a lump sum to pay off the mortgage and also provide a monthly allowance for the family so the partner can stay home and look after their children.

Over the years, Term insurance is gaining popularity as a core protection plan especially among investment-savvy individual. They find that Term insurance is reasonably priced and the premiums they saved (from buying a Term plan instead of a whole life plan) can be used to invest for potential growth.

Availing insurance for mobile phones has become very common these days. In particular people using costly mobile phones like iPhone and others are preferring to go for these policies in order to minimize their maintenance cost of this expensive gadget as well as to avail many other advantages these policies offer. With the vast number of options available to choose from it is the responsibility of each one of us to choose the best possible insurance policy for your mobile phone.

With the increasing competition among these companies the insurance policies are being made available at much cheaper prices. If we could spend some time in analyzing this fact, we could very easily identify the cheap and best possible iPhone insurance which could cover most of the things that is expected out of it.

Availing online insurance policies is one among the best ways to get cheap mobile phone insurance with maximum coverage options. More than retail purchase of these kinds of policies, people prefer these online policies because of this advantage. These online policies will not compromise the coverage options for the cheaper prices they offer and hence it is a very good decision to go for these policies.

In order to identify the best among these online plans, it is required to compare the pros and cons of each of the policies and match the same along with the cost of them, such that you could very clearly identify the cheap and best one among the crowd. There are many websites which provide many useful tools in order to make these kinds of comparisons and hence if you could make use of these resources you can very easily get a cheap mobile phone insurance.

To say it has been a rough year for most people is a minor understatement. The name of the game these days is to cut expenses wherever you can. One place most people do not look, but should, is their car insurance. You can make a few changes that will really drive down the price.

Insurance is a subject much like taxes. You don’t really want to deal with it, but you know you have to. I own life insurance, but honestly don’t really understand how it works other than to know it will pay out money when I die to the person I designated. Other than that, I just send in a check every month and hope for the best.

Most people view car insurance the same way. They ask for “full coverage” and then go for the lowest quote they get. What most people don’t understand is car insurance is actually a collection of different insurance coverages. You don’t need all of them. The ones you do need do not really require all the coverage you might be paying for. If you can get things under control, you can slash your car insurance premiums and give yourself some serious budgetary relief.

The first issue to consider is the coverage you have. You need liability insurance because this covers you for third party claims. Put more specifically, this covers you for the repairs to other cars and medical claims if you cause an accident. Whatever you do, make sure you maintain liability coverage.

What about comprehensive coverage? Well, you might need this, but you might not. Comprehensive coverage takes care of the cost of replacing or repairing your car. You need it if you drive a new or old car. The question is how much coverage do you need? If you are driving a 5 year old Honda with a blue book value of $6,000, you probably don’t need $50,000 in comprehensive coverage. Cut the coverage down to $10,000 and your premiums will drop.

Car insurance comes with coverage for medical bills should you be involved in an accident. Millions of Americans don’t have health insurance, but what if you do? There is little reason to pay for medical coverage on your car insurance if you already have independent health insurance. If this is the case, cancel the medical coverage on your car insurance and save big bucks.

The final step with your expense cutting has to do with your deductible. The deductible is the amount you are responsible to pay before your car insurance kicks in. Most people have it set at $250. You should raise the deductible to $1,000. Your premiums will plummet because it is far less likely the insurance company will have to pay any claims. To avoid problems, make sure to save up and set aside $1,000 for any repairs.

You can slice car insurance premiums by 20 to 30 percent with these simple steps. In some cases, the discount will be even more. That is some serious money and we can all use every buck we can find these days.

We already know that we can find anything on the internet. If we need somwthing, we can easily search it on the internet and get the some results and we can choose those results and pick the one that suitable with what we need. With internet we can save our time and transportation cost. So i can say that online shopping can save your money. This thing works the same if you need to find insurance from health insruance, auto insurance and online home owners insurance. To find an insurance you need to compare some insurance companies then you have to pick one that can give you the best offer.

To compare some insurance companies is not too difficult if we do it online. We can save much time than if we do it manually. Also it is easier for you to find insurance that can process your insurance application quickly. As i said before, to find the best quick car insurance on the internet, we need to do comparison. Reading the quotes from several car insurance companies can help you find the best car insurance on the internet. So from now on you can use internet to find insurance you need because it is quick and easy.

Saving money on car insurance is a lot easier thanks to the Internet, and by getting a little creative. All a person has to do is go on line, type in car insurance to any search engine and a list of many companies and their various rates will pop up for anyone to peruse.

It’s an easy procedure finding rates for car insurance for either one driver with one vehicle, or even two drivers with two vehicles.

Depending on what kind of coverage a driver wants, is one of the many variables as to dictating what the rates will be. Other variables will be if the driver has had any accidents, how many cars need to be covered, and how many drivers there are.

What can you do to lower your car insurance rates?

Drive the least amount of vehicles in a family as possible. If only one-person works, and you own two vehicles, sell one, and then the insurance rates will go down. Delay for as long as possible, teaching your teenagers how to drive. Adding just one teenager to car insurance payments causes the rates to skyrocket. That’s because teenagers are young new drivers and are seen as a high risk, so Mom and Dad get socked with a huge bill. If you have a teenager living at home, your teenage could get a job and pay extra pounds towards car insurance payments every month.

Park your vehicle in a covered garage every night, and watch your car insurance rates go down. Just by having a garage to park even one car in every night can bring down the rates. This way the insurance company figures your vehicle isn’t as much of a risk, because it is stored away safe and sound every evening, away from prowling thieves.

Several insurance companies have plans that give you a discounted rate just because you graduated from a certain university. Call your insurance carrier and find out if the university you attended is on their list of discounted benefactors, and you can save some money.

Having low mileage on your vehicle can keep rates low also. Insurance companies must figure you only drive your car to church on Sundays, like little old ladies used to say they did. The less you use the car, the less the mileage, and the lower your rates. Having a short commute to work also keeps your insurance rates low. You are less of a risk then, by driving less distance every day. Create a stay-at home career for yourself, and watch those rates literally disappear.

Compare rates on the Internet for several car insurance carriers and then you have quotes to use in your favor, when you make a final decision. Utilize your alma mater; don’t overextend yourself on owning too many vehicles, work as close to home as possible, and park your vehicle in a safe place at night and maximize insurance savings. You could always sell your vehicle, and ride a bike to work. That way you can 100’s of pounds on insurance, parking fees, and expensive petrol.

There are many car insurance companies that give good car insurance offers. They offer good rates and they claim that they can cover everything with easy monthly payment. Car insurance can be used for people whom own a car so they can protect their car when something bad happen to the cars. Unexpected accident may come to anyone at anytime. To prevent the worst case like the car is badly broken, car insurance can help you to cover this kind of problem. You may spend thousand dollars if your car get an accident and it is badly damaged.

You may have money to rapier your car and this thought may make you think that having a car insurance for your car is not necessary. Money is not the only thing than can be covered by the car insurance companies. Everything relates to the car accident like give explanation to the police and the victims can be taken care by the car insurance. So even you have money to fix your car, car insurance still can take care of other problems that takes your time. You can ask your car insurance to take care the problems. So you can get many advantages if you get a car insurance for your car.