Defining Insurance Coverage for Personal Lines Insurance
People over 50 have a growing need for asset protection because they have more assets worth protecting. But professionals who work in the field say that insurance coverage spreads unevenly along income insurances lines. More affluent seniors tend to be heavily-insured; less affluent ones tend to be under-insured. This discrepancy reflects the insurance market at large. It may have special meaning to people planning their lives around fixed family incomes.
Personal Lines Insurance Center (PLIC), a subsidiary of ITT Hartford created specifically to market automobile and homeowners insurance directly to members of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), sees in great detail how these issues affect people.
“From our start-up in 1984, we have attracted 1.5 million policy holders, and our annual sales have grown to $900 million. While AARP is our only customer, it currently has 32 million members in the U.S., and this means that our growth prospects are enormous,” says Hugh Martin, an ITT executive who helped developed Personal Lines Insurance Center. “Our customers can’t, however, buy our product from their golfing buddy or their neighborhood broker. All of our sales and service is done directly by our employees without the help of local agents.”
“We set a target to train each of our phone reps in all insurance transactions and products that a customer could possibly request,” says Martin. ‘”The trouble with this approach to service was that insurance is a state-regulated business with products and pricing unique to each state. We found that even those reps that had been with us three and four years felt they still had a lot to learn.”
The people who buy their insurance through Personal Lines Insurance Center are well-informed and have specific questions they raise with phone reps. When a Personal Lines Insurance Center person can’t answer a customer’s questions, there’s a significant chance that customer will seek out an agent face-to-face.
If you’re over 50, you have good reason to be demanding about the personal lines insurance you buy. One reason stands out from the others older people have better loss records than young ones. That means they make claims less often. They pose less of a risk under a home or auto policy.