Insurers Ranked on Creativity and Claims Efficiency

Zurich North America sury & Risk Management magazine recently surveyed treasurers and risk managers on insurer creativity and claims paying efficiency. It received an 11 percent response rate to the 2,250 surveys it mailed to insurance company customers, namely treasurers, risk managers and insurance brokers. Topping the respondents' list of most creative insurer was AIG. Chubb took title of best claim payer.

AIG averaged 4.06 in creativity, where 5 represented "most creative" and 1 represented "least creative". The rest of the top ten were Lloyd's of London (3.96), <%=company%> (3.60), Reliance (3.59), Berkshire Hathaway (3.46), Chubb (3.45), Travelers (3.27), CNA Financial (3.24), Liberty Mutual (3.20) and Royal (3.20).

Chubb's 3.69 scored it top honors in the claims-paying tally, where 5 stands for "most expedient". Rounding out the top ten-well, 11, because of a tie-were Allendale (3.65), Kemper (3.46), Zurich American (3.41), Royal (3.35), Travelers (3.33), St. Paul (3.33), CNA Financial (3.27), Safeco (3.25) and Liberty Mutual tied with The Hartford (3.23).

Respondents also reported on claims on which they had difficulty collecting. The types of policy, and frequency of difficulty, were: Property (99), General Liability (75), Business Interruption (63), Directors and Officers Liability (49), Product Liability (40), Environmental, (37) Automobile (29), Other (22), Worker's Compensation (20) and Employment Practices (11).