The following is the "Consumers Bill of Rights", downloaded from the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO) website at www.fsco.gov.on.ca . Any Ontario driver who purchases insurance should know their rights, in case they ever receive mixed messages from their insurance broker or claims adjuster.
1. You have the right to purchase auto insurance coverage.
2. You have the right to be treated fairly by your insurance company.
3. You have the right to be given written reasons if you have been denied auto insurance.
4. You have the right to keep your policy in place if you pay your premiums and meet the responsibilities.
5. You have the right to pay your auto insurance premium in monthly instalments.
6. You have the right to keep your policy in place if you pay your premium within 30 days following one or two non-sufficient fund (NSF) situations.
7. You have the right to be informed in writing if your policy is not being renewed.
8. You have the right to change or cancel your insurance policy at any time.
9. You have the right to remain with your insurance company even if that company no longer sells insurance through your broker.
10. You have the right to know from which companies your broker received quotes and the amounts.
11. You have the right to prompt and fair handling of claims.
12. You have the right to reasonable repair of your damaged vehicle.
13. You have the right to choose a repair shop, tow operator or vehicle rental company.
14. You have the right to receive information about accident benefits.
15. You have the right to dispute your insurance company's refusal to pay benefits.
16. You have the right to choose your health care provider.
17. You have the right to register a complaint about your insurance company.
Rights eleven through sixteen are directly related to claims handling. Of these, I believe that number eleven is the most important; but it doesn't go far enough. Anyone who reports an accident should expect to be treated courteously, professionally, and for those who don't understand the accident process, with due patience. Nowhere in the auto insurance policy does it state that there is a limit on the time that an adjuster should spend with their policyholder to explain the claims process. Many claimant horror stories arise from the failure of adjusters to respond to voice mail messages or to reply to e-mails. This is poor service and simply is not an acceptable way of doing business.
For some policyholders, English is not their first language and they still struggle to make themselves understood. Surely if there is a language issue during the adjustment of a claim, it should be the adjuster and not the policyholder, who makes the effort to find someone who can translate?
While some insurers have managed to establish an appropriate customer response system, there are other companies that simply fail to provide an acceptable level of customer service, at all. In an effort to measure how they are doing, almost every Ontario auto insurance company must engage a marketing company to conduct a random Claims Satisfaction Survey of their policyholders, who have had paid claims.
This might appear to be an objective way to measure satisfaction, but there are too many variables in the process which can potentially result in a higher score than is warranted. For example, policyholders who did not receive any payment because their claims were denied; are excluded from the process.
I could only find some outdated results on the FSCO website showing that the overall satisfaction score was 86%. This was broken down to 63% who were very satisfied and 23% who were somewhat satisfied. I'm not certain how this translates into 86% overall, as by my calculation the score should be lower, but there you have it. I'll try to locate the 2005 satisfaction levels and share this with readers in a future column.
Susan Saksida, CIP is an Insurance Consultant. Questions or comments can be emailed to insurance compliancematters@rogers.com
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