I read with interest the other day that AWD are aiming for a single application form. Single app forms have been the holy grail of the insurance industry for as long as I can remember and surely a concept that should be able to be delivered. Packagers in the mortgage industry, after all, often have a single form agreed across a number of Lenders. But how many times has this been tried and failed in other market sectors.
Insurers protect their approaches with vigour and conversations in the past have stalled on items such as agreeing a single list of accepted titles for the applicants, ‘market differentiation’ and underwriting emphasis.
I remember one industry attempt by Origo where the industry tried to agree common content to an application form. In this attempt the goals were more modest than the AWD attempt, as they were simply looking to agree a standard structure, agreeing key questions and their order while allowing provider specific content also.
Through this came the defined a set of standard content for bond applications. Bonds are fairly standardised and don’t have the variety of different underwriting questions associated with protection policies so should have been an ideal start point. However the standards were rarely followed properly, eventually being virtually abandoned, in spite of being driven by some powerful IFA’s at the time, such as Towry Law and Halifax IFA.
What is interesting to note is that times seem to have moved on and insurers are keener to win distribution through key distributors such AWD so let’s hope for more success this time.
