Often they generate very little in premium and thus very little in revenue. The clients who just can't seem to ever pay a bill on time.you get them to pay one late premium notice and then they're immediately behind on the next payment. The one's who you wonder if it's just insurance, or do they go to the limit with their electric bill and rent and phone bills. The one's you wonder if they ever open their mail. That alone got me to change my business practices.Įvery retail agency, whether personal lines or commercial has them.the perpetual late pay people. Then, the insured just let the policy lapse again due to a total auto loss, so there was no more revenue derived through normal commissions. I've been in the situation where I've chased after a habitual late pay insured, got the policy reinstated, only to have a significant loss soon after payment was received and cost me major dollars in contingency monies. I think the legal term is 'estoppel', whereby past practices can become the established norm for business aning that if an agency is consistantly and constantly informing habitual late pay insureds about their payment status and that is enough to prompt a payment from the insured, then one day 'getting really pissed' for all the extra work and saying 'screw it.I'm tired of nagging them every payment' and then the policy cancels, a loss occurrs and claim is denied, then the agency can be held responsible if the insured says they relied on the contact, rather than the billing, to make the payment and when that contact was withheld, it constituted a breech of notification responsibility.Īlthough never accused of that, I've been there and done that at the retail level, an so, whether for personal lines or small/medium commercial lines, I make it clear that if a late pay pattern manifests itself, that I state my call for late payment reminder is NOT custom and practice, but rather an isolated courtesy, and I then document that conversation in the file, so that if/when I reach the end of my patience and business activity in trying to conserve all the continuous late pay business, I'm documented that it never became the 'normal' business practice to induce payment.
0 kommentar(er)
