Insurance industry & the current economic climate

The insurance industry has not escaped the consequences of the current economic climate and there are a number of issues effecting service that we are seeing on a day-to-day basis.
I’ve listed some of our recent experiences, both for our business and our customers, clearly these are challenging times for us all.
Body-shop repairs following motor accidents are subject to long delays, mostly weeks, but in some instances we are seeing months and no insurer seems to be immune.
The lack of available parts, not just in the UK both to the whole of Europe seems to be the main reason and as a consequence body-shop repairers have to manage the work-flow resulting in delays to even minor repairs.
We are also seeing delays in the settlement of property claims, the main cause of which would seem to be a lack of available adjusters / surveyors on the ground.
There is now doubt that “catastrophic” events, like storm Eunice can cause back-logs however, these delays are on-going so there has to be a lack of bodies to make site visits an estimates.
Most insurers will agree to minor temporary repairs to ensure that the property is made safe or water-tight, just make sure you get agreement in advance.
Many insurers have adopted a wider approach to “cash-in-lieu” settlements to help ease the back-log, particularly lower value claims, however be prepared to be patient is the best advice I can give.
Whilst improving, we are still experiencing a drop in service from our insurer partners; initially we believed this was a lack of communication for those staff working remotely; however I have been informed that workloads have more than doubled a result of the closure of off-shore call centers, a direct result of the global pandemic.
Finally, one of the biggest and most surprising issues we have experienced this year is the lack of available new recruits.
Whilst I understand that almost every industry is struggling to recruit quality staff, I didn’t expect the insurance industry to be so effected.
I, wrongly, assumed that there would be a wave of applications from people wanting to return to an office environment at the end of the pandemic, certainly some of the younger generation and in my experience the insurance industry was never reliant on migrant workers so I don’t think Brexit would impact on us either.
We have had to re-think our recruitment strategy as our business continues to grow and whilst employing trainees and apprentices may cause us more work initially am I hopeful that long term we will see the benefit.