David Williams urges the industry to grab a “huge opportunity”.
If you believe the trade press and Biba, brokers have been unfairly excludedfrom being able to offer Flood Re cover by selfish insurers and lazysoftware houses.
Whatever the motivations of commentators that is how their message has been perceived.
Axa has refrained from getting involved in this until now because we did not want to fuel a fire that really does risk undermining what is a fantastic industry-led initiative and something that all of us can be proud of delivering.
As an industry, we don’t often have the opportunity to show our customers and commentators that we are united in delivering something that is solely for the benefit of the customer.
Flood Re was such a chance, which is why it is so disheartening to witness the public attempt to blame certain parties for a lack of broker inclusion in Flood Re since it has launched.
Control
To deal briefly with the facts.
It is alleged that brokers have been unfairly excluded because insurers have been focused on delivering their direct offerings first. They may have delivered them first but that has more to do with control over their own software platforms, workflow and workload than any grand design.
From our perspective, Axa is actually live with two intermediaries (Cherish and Avantia) before we are live with our direct customers, who will be able to access Flood Re on 20 April.
So the accusation that insurers are giving their direct channels the advantage is a generalisation which appears handy but is actually flawed.
What has also been missed among the mudslinging is the fact that this is a world first, is very complicated and arrives in the midst of a huge programme of regulatory change that must be implemented.
So if some brokers are struggling to get attention and get live, it has everything to do with schedules and resource and nothing to do with discrimination.
There is an assumption that every broker in the land is clamouring to get on board and they are being prevented from doing so.
That isn’t the case and for a multitude of reasons.
Simplistic
In addition, I have not seen any comment on the role that brokers have to play in getting themselves live on Flood Re.
Life is seldom as simple and straightforward as we would like and Flood Re is the same so to try to reduce it to an ‘us and them’ scenario, is simplistic and misleading.
It really saddens me that what should have been a huge coup for the industry has descended into sniping and back biting and that we are once again arguing amongst ourselves.
Make no mistake, this is a huge opportunity to show that the industry can come together for the greater good of our customers and we are at grave risk of completely undermining that within our own ranks.
That’s not just sad, that’s depressing.
David Williams is technical director at Axa Insurance.
