The Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance’s (ANZIIF) latest short course focuses on delivering good outcomes for vulnerable customers. Asia Insurance Review spoke to ANZIIF’s Ms Katrina Shanks about what vulnerability means, the importance of good communications and the rise in empathy amongst insurers.
The Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance’s (ANZIIF) new hour-long short course is intended to help insurers improve communications with vulnerable customers – those that have been identified as needing additional support and assistance in the process of either buying insurance or filing a claim.
“There are many different variations of definitions of vulnerable in many jurisdictions around the world,” said ANZIIF CEO Katrina Shanks. “Depending on what jurisdiction you look at - and your interpretation of vulnerable. The main concept to remember is that a vulnerable person is identified during the time when you are communicating with them, when you understand that they may not comprehend what is being said to them in a normal conversation.”
In communicating with a vulnerable customer, insurers need to make special provisions; perhaps in terms of the way they speak, the speed at which they speak, the language that they use and the way they communicate within the different channels.
It is of utmost importance for insurers to cultivate the ability to ensure that these customers can understand what is being communicated.
Learning to communicate
One method is to simplify the terms that are being used during the conversation, as insurance is full of jargon and technical terms.
“I think we, as professionals, need to consider that every client has different financial literacy capability. We need to have an understanding of when to use the terminology that exists in our industry and how to use it,” Ms Shanks said.
“Maybe it’s by getting the clients to repeat back what they’ve been told, to see if they’re understanding what’s being said, so you can find out how much of the terminology they have grasped and whether you have to change.”
She also said that during the conversation, the insurer could ask questions to ascertain the customer’s emotional and mental state, because situations such as filing a claim can be highly emotional.
“Questions like ‘how are you feeling today?’ Or ‘do you feel a bit distressed today?’ Or ‘do you understand the circumstances that we’re talking about today?’ By really understanding how to identify those signs, you’re learning how to communicate with the right type of questions that you’re going to use with these groups of customers,” she said.
This communication also needs to go beyond the insurance aspect and move from delivering information to delivering compassion. “You need to show compassion and sympathy, while also being that professional insurance person. You must understand the real-life impact these conversations can have,” she said.
Going beyond insurance skills
Ms Shanks also noted that this course goes beyond the typical insurance skills that ANZIIF delivers. “We have a range of subject-matter experts that we use. For the first time we’ve got a module within this vulnerability course which talks about and identifies family or domestic violence. And obviously with that, we need experts from the field who deal with this every day,” she said.
“Anybody who is dealing with the client like claims handlers, brokers, financial advisers, loss adjusters, will find this course invaluable,” she said. “We hear from the regulators that vulnerability is still an area on which they are continuing to work – not just the identification of vulnerability, but how we also work with a vulnerable client.”
This is an area on which the industry still needs to keep improving. “At the end of the day, you build trusted relationships based on the way you communicate and your behaviours. It’s really important that we have the right forms of effective communication in place for those who are the most vulnerable, because we’ve also got to remember that insurance only comes into effect once you have to use it. It has to be able to respond in a timely manner,” she said.
She said that this communication could occur not just at the point of claim but also at the point of sale. Insurers must make sure that their clients are purchasing the right policy at the right time. “It’s just as important to have the right policy in place, and to have your customer know what their policy is and how it’s going to respond when they need it to respond,” she said. “And to make sure that they know the constraints or limitations of their policy.”
Empathy in claims
This new course also dovetails with a recent short course that ANZIIF delivered on empathy in claims.
“The empathetic claims course came out of listening to the inquiry in 2022, which highlighted the need for insurers to have more empathy when they’re talking to clients. So that course focused on the way we communicate with clients, while vulnerability is understanding how we need to communicate with clients,” she said.
The two courses dovetail together to a certain extent; one focuses on the identification of the vulnerability and of how insurers are going to talk to this group of customers, while the other one is on how they talk.
“They definitely both go hand in hand. They can stand beside each other as well, especially if you are an insurer or a broker and you’ve got concerns about how your people are talking to your clients,” she said. “The courses are a response to the market in general, as well as a response to the legislators talking about the need for empathy and protecting vulnerable customers.”
Ms Shanks also said that ANZIIF is going to put a suite of courses together that will address different components of communication.
“There’s a whole range of courses that we can create for the next stage, which we’re looking at developing now,” she said. “For example, building resilience for your people. Resilience in this case means learning the right listening skills in a difficult conversation and navigating said conversation.
“There are about four components to what we’re looking at. How you identify vulnerability is going to be one of those components. There’s a whole range of tools that we can put together to help build resilience,” she said.
Details on the short course can be found on ANZIIF’s website:
www.anziif.com A