Insurance Broker Conflict of Interest

According to the Globe and Mail, insurance brokers receive lavish vacations and other perks from insurance companies. My own brief encounter with insurance brokers didn’t reveal any conflicts of interest, but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Continuing yesterday’s story of my home insurance company dropping me, my next step was to try to find another insurance company to take me on. I decided to try an insurance broker and called a few. None answered the phone. I left messages and when I didn’t get a call back by the next day, I called a few others.

In all I called 15 insurance brokers. Only one had a human answer the phone to take a message. After I left a second message with one broker, I got a call back from a guy who took some information, promised to call back again, but never did. The entire experience was baffling. Something big must have been happening in the industry at that time.

Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 29, 2010 at 3:19 PM

    Have you tried shopping around on kanetix.ca and insurancehotline.com ? That should get you started unless you have some unusual needs?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousOctober 23, 2011 at 5:01 PM

    Michael James, how did your story end? We are looking at a similar scenario, with our house insurance policy in jeopardy if we don't get adequate business liability insurance, because we have some US clients. So, we're going liability insurance shopping tomorrow, through a broker. Just curious to know how your tale ended, and what sort of premium you had to pay.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Michael JamesOctober 23, 2011 at 6:18 PM

    @Anonymous: I never did get any business insurance and I was never able to get insurance on my home. So I've lived without insurance for several years. I don't recommend this, though. In my case, I'm essentially self-insured with my own assets.

    ReplyDelete

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