Insurance industry reputation ‘damaged’ by COVID-19 failings, say majority of brokers

The majority of brokers think confidence in the insurance industry has been “damaged” by its response to consumers and businesses during the COVID-19 crisis, according to a poll by FWD Research, an independent research agency.

According to the results, from 150 telephone interviews across FWD’s Broking Now Panel in May and June, two thirds of UK brokers believe failings in insurance cover during the pandemic has undermined the profession’s reputation.

Respondents told the poll: “The industry was deadly silent for the first two weeks but they should not have been.”

While in apparent reference to industry leaders and the government another respondent said: “They need to be more proactive in terms of guiding us in terms of legislation.”

Nearly all respondents agreed that policy wordings “need urgent review”.

The poll found that significantly more brokers have concerns over policy wordings from Lloyds of London and the London Market than other markets.

Simon Staplehurst, senior research director of FWD Research said: “However, when it comes to long term outlook, there were a number of ongoing concerns over the success of some of their customer groups, particularly across some micro and small SMEs and their own jobs, with a quarter of brokers feeling uncertain about job security. However, the survey finds only 1 percent of brokers have had to make redundancies and a third of brokerages have put staff on furlough.”

He said business confidence for the long term is focused more on business survival rather than anything else. This is because “brokers [are] predicting that they could lose nearly a quarter of their new business gross written premium this year”.

These are the findings of FWD Research’s, first wave of its Insurance Brokers Pulse-Point Tracker (PPT) – a COVID-19-focused industry confidence barometer.