NZI Car Accident Claims – Affected by Mass Redundancies ?

It’s a fickle world in the corporate shark-tank. It was reported yesterday that IAG’s new Australian Division has adopted a new strategic approach and simplified its structure, sparking a shock-wave of redundancies. http://insurancenews.com.au/…/iag-restructure-results-in-ke….  Perhaps we can look forward to faster NZI car accident claims, assessing & repair authorisations?

Crash Management will be sure to cover it. Meantime we hear continued complaints about the already slow processing times for NZI car accident claims and it’s been a hot topic in CoverNote magazine recently with the Collision Repair Assoc (CRA) suggesting that NZI car accident claims  performance is the worst in the market, along with parent company IAG and their other subsidiaries State & AMI.  CoverNote has also reported that CRA research shows the average time taken to repair a vehicle is around 6 days (after all the formalities are finally completed) of which a third is lost in administration and unnecessary  bureaucracy.  There’s no doubt the total time to complete car accident claims from lodgement to final repair completion is growing longer and is caused by many industry delays.

Crash Management is very aware how problematic this is for clients so we’re very focused on streamlining and expediting the end-to-end experience for our customers.  The new free rental car facility for not-at-fault parties is also proving extremely popular with clients particularly business fleets and those needing free replacement commercial vehicles including utes and vans.  Our mission is to save customers time & inconvenience, and keep them on the road.

The CRA states that the time taken up with complying with NZI car accident claims and assessing procedures can be as long as the repair itself and results in the vehicle being off the road for twice as long as it need be.

Don’t be a victim, Crash Management can help.  Call 0800 2CRASH to fast-track and avoid the bureaucracy, we can have customers in a free rental car within 24hrs and get you back on the road faster! https://crashmanagement.co.nz/clients/insurance-claims/nzi-car-claim-crash-management-new-zealand/

 

 

 

7 Responses

  1. Duncan
    | Reply

    I can verify this. The NZI claim routine was far too slow. The panelbeater you got to fix my van was excellent but they did complain about the rigmarole and office time taken up with taking multi rounds of photos that they do not get paid for. They said their expected to do the assesssors job for them but the time is not chargable as admin is included in the $65 an hour labour rate – joke! What tradie would work for $65. No wonder no one wants to work in the panelbeating industry. Come on NZI treat your tradies fair.They did a good job though and Crash organised everything so very easy for me and my driver. The free rental van was a bonus and delivered to the door thanks Crash. Very glad our broker introduced us to Crash Management, great service and information support.

  2. Leslie Franks
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    I certainly agree that Crash Management can deliver a great customer service and we’ve seen this many times. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to single out NZI claims process though regardless of what the CRA may claim to the contrary. Tim Grafton’s response is that the panelbeating sector is under-resourced and I think we’lll all agree with that, the current service waiting times for repairs is extreme. We’re aware of 3 – 4 months delays with some service providers in some regions.

    As an aside, the free Acorn Rental cars for not at-fault parties is no doubt a fantastic offering from the client’s perspective but I must say that all insurers absolutely hate it and are refusing to pay – so how will this affect clients who have availed themselves of the free rentals?

    IAG may be a hard task-master from the panelbeaters point of view but lets not forget that it is their job to keep repair costs as low as possible. Perhaps improved training and technology is the answer for the panelbeating businesses?

    • Alan
      | Reply

      I’ve been an insurance professional for 30yrs, and I believe the product and service has deteriorated over the past decade particularly. Both consumers, brokers, and service providers have been affected and not in a good way. Increasing aggregation is to blame including the lack of choice and competition in the market. NZ has one of the most concentrated general insurance markets in the world, and it doesn’t help that house and car insurers are keeping their prices in the dark.
      In 2010, electricity companies started making their prices more transparent and accessible to consumers, and Glimp co-founder Michael Speight said he wants to see the same happen in the insurance industry.

      Speight said he believes New Zealanders need to be able to shop around for the best insurance deals, and the availability of transparent price and service plans will mean cheaper insurance costs as insurers compete for customers.

      He said getting insurance companies to become more transparent about their pricing, however, “won’t be easy.” He recalls how hard it was trying to convince electricity retailers to give them information about their pricing.

      “The electricity retailers were very resistant to us,” he explained. “We were one of the first ones to ask for the pricing, and we had to go to the Electricity Authority to make them give it to us.” He believes it will be much the same with insurance companies.

      “The market for personal house and contents insurance is already highly concentrated and uncompetitive,” added Massey University’s School of Business Dr Michael Taylor. “The current market structure can be characterised as a duopoly. My figures show that IAG has 50%, Suncorp has 28%, Tower 7%, and FMG 4%.”

      With four companies controlling the entire insurance industry in New Zealand, prices remain consistently high Taylor said

  3. Ken Black
    | Reply

    There they go again! NZI strutting around the Insurance Awards in SkyCity luxury congratulating themselves about scooping every award – well what do you expect when you can dominate the entire market in a tiny country. Chances are you’ll win. And what are the “judges” (ie Team IAG) thinking when they applauded NZI for forward-thinking and relationship-first approach. HaaaaaaaH – having a laugh. IAG NZI Lumely and all their friends have single handedly DESTROYED the collision repair industry in NZ. Hello is anyone listening? Panel shops are closing the doors almost monthly and no ones opened a new one anywhere in NZ for 10 years. You can’t even sell a shop for the equipment value anymore, who would want to work 12 hours a day for no margin and lower wages even that your own tradesmen are paid! IF you could get tradesmen which you can’t because any other industry can afford to pay higher rates than collision repair. Digging holes on a building site pays better. Nice forward-thinking and relationship-first approach IAG! Check out the whole story on scoop http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1711/S00592/iag-celebrates-industry-leadership-at-insurance-awards.htm.

  4. Megan
    | Reply

    hi Crash Team – great to see you at the Crawfords Assessing event last week! It’s always interesting to see all the underwriters mixing (or not!) at the industry functions. Some didn’t look entirely happy but then some never do. I was listening in and disturbed to hear a couple of insurance company rogue-elephants presumes to criticise Crash Management and use their corporate bullying power to bad-mouth to brokers – nasty, unethical and very inappropriate! Most insurance players are true professionals but there’s a few spiteful tyrants out there. Now I know why! Did you know you had a big corporate competitor? And did you know that a certain insurance conglomorate has a significant ownership in your competitor! I’ve done some sleuthing so now the secrets out – NZI owns a chunk of mega Aussie accident management company SurePlan! No wonder they’re slagging you off Crash, they want to ruin the game for you and put their own crash service in place. Now this is all starting to look less like mindless bullying and its smelling a lot more like a nasty conflict of interest and competitive intimidation. Not ethical for sure and probably not legal either if you’d heard some of the scare tactics and misleading statements being thrown around. What are you doing about it???

    • Crash Management
      | Reply

      Unfortunately this is true so understandable why NZI, Lumley, AMI & the rest of the IAG brands have always kept a surprising silence in regard to our competitor SurePlan – they own them so will of course disparage the competition (us) while defending them (SurePlan).. Hopefully our clients and valued insurance broker friends can see right through the ploy though. Crash Management won the insurance brokers award for innovation in 2009, and we’re still delivering the best 24/7 accident management offering in the market. And the evidence speaks for itself – the public can see the unsolicited unfiltered customer feedback on the consumer protection website NoCowboys and judge for themselves – https://www.nocowboys.co.nz/businesses/crash-management-ltd. It predominantly represents only our retail customers so is a small part of our client demographic mix, but is still a strong indicator and we’re proud of it. We have no wish to stoop to the level of bickering of some commentators , it’s just anti-competitor noise. We’ll leave our reputation to speak for itself. I trust you spoke up for us at the event though Megan?!

  5. Suze
    | Reply

    There’s a rumor going around that IAG / NZI / Lumley are planning to buy out a major automotive paint distributor – what do you know about that Crash? And is it true there’s a major deal being stitched up with the aussie Gemini group?

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