Call for support over preparation

I enjoyed reading the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters technical forum report on the future of claims preparation last week (PM, 17 June, pp14-15). My only reservation is the fact that none of the three big players in the loss assessor industry were present: Thompson and Bryan, Harris or my company.

It would seem that - taking the view from the forum, along with Jonathan Clark and Harry Roberts' comments at the recent claims club forum (PM, 10 June, p11) - there is obviously a groundswell of opinion to improve the claims service to the insured, and rightly so.

It is interesting to see that the issue of claims preparation costs on an insurance policy is now coming to the fore. Balcombe Group has been advocating this for many years and I now hope insurers in the UK will begin to issue policies with an extension to cover this aspect as they do in many other countries - with an approved panel of assessors.

Insurers will also have to give back to adjusters the authority to settle claims. They should be paid a fair fee for their work and, as I suggested last week, a time frame set from the submission of a claim to the acceptance or rejection of liability of, for example, 28 days. This would then, I believe, lead to a dramatic improvement in the processing of claims.

This form of regulation would remove - from both the adjusting and assessing side - the one-man bands that, in my opinion, do not enhance the reputation of our industry.

Nick Balcombe

Chief executive

Balcombe Group.