According to Yorkshire Water who wrote to me today they are making my money go further, investing their profits and really pushing to improve their service to their customers.
Given that as a carbon based life form I need water to survive this is a lovely thing and I really appreciate their kind efforts.
There is however a problem. According to the letter YW sent me they are having to put their prices up by an average of £ 22 per household per annum. Again this seems eminently fair - £ 2 per month for all this extra service and presumably 'better' water (although those pesky oxygen and hydrogen atoms always seemed fine to me as they were).
Still a problem though. My bill is actually going up by £ 8 per month which mathematically is a lot more than £ 22 per annum - in fact it is £ 96 per annum. I'm assuming I'm obviously not average - we have two adults and two kids in our household so there's clearly no way a family of four could even be considered remotely average.
Joking aside, I would contend that Yorkshire Water are a bunch of fibbers who in have fiddled the statistics to come up with a ridiculous rigged statistic that in no way reflects real life and are taking advantage of an effective monopoly position they have inherited.
Monday, 18 November 2013
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
Sleepless in ..... St James
Had a call from a poorly relative at 1.30am this morning and had to accompany them to St James Hospital in Leeds - they were admitted at 5.30am and I got home this morning at around 6.00am.
I'm finding the lack of sleep invigorating and would recommend it highly, maybe operating heavy machinery wouldn't be a good idea !
I'm finding the lack of sleep invigorating and would recommend it highly, maybe operating heavy machinery wouldn't be a good idea !
Tuesday, 12 November 2013
Find out about underwriting on medical insurance
I recorded and uploaded the 11th episode in Season 2 of PMICast (the only medical insurance podcast in the UK) today.
This one features some information around the different types of underwriting presented as a 'frequently asked question' type overview. I hope that it is of interest and would ask you to post a review on iTunes (US or UK) if you like it.
If you would like to consider medical insurance please feel free to e-mail me on either pmicast@gmail.com or philknight@pch.uk.com
_________
This one features some information around the different types of underwriting presented as a 'frequently asked question' type overview. I hope that it is of interest and would ask you to post a review on iTunes (US or UK) if you like it.
If you would like to consider medical insurance please feel free to e-mail me on either pmicast@gmail.com or philknight@pch.uk.com
_________
Monday, 11 November 2013
Question :How can you tell when a is lying ? Answer : When they open their mouth to speak
Recent experiences drive me to wonder if in certain occupations telling the truth is a worthwhile experience.
It's a well worn stereotype that second hand car salesmen can be economical with the truth and it is not for me to cast judgement or aspersions as to whether or not this is an accurate description.
I spoke to several second hand car sales people over the weekend and the representatives of one large regional company (who shall remain nameless) intrigue me. Their company stance is that their approved used cars are so competitively priced (they check their stock against other retailers both regionally and nationally and cut prices to be the cheapest in the area etc) that the price on the windscreen is the lowest they can possibly offer. The net result is that there's no negotiation on prices or part exchange valuations (because they know exactly what they can get for your car etc).
Assuming the above to be true and their vehicles are the cheapest, I actually commented that I'd almost prefer them to add a few hundred quid to the price they show on the windscreen so at least I'd be able to go through the charade of bartering and feel (however wrongly) I'd got a better deal.
So assuming this stance is accurate and this company is the cheapest in all the land, then I'd actually rather they'd lie to me so I could be more involved in the process. Not sure what that says about me, the company in question or the motor trade in general.
__________
__________
Watch out for PMICast coming to a pod catcher near you tomorrow - we will be re-visiting medical underwriting for personal clients tomorrow.
It's a well worn stereotype that second hand car salesmen can be economical with the truth and it is not for me to cast judgement or aspersions as to whether or not this is an accurate description.
I spoke to several second hand car sales people over the weekend and the representatives of one large regional company (who shall remain nameless) intrigue me. Their company stance is that their approved used cars are so competitively priced (they check their stock against other retailers both regionally and nationally and cut prices to be the cheapest in the area etc) that the price on the windscreen is the lowest they can possibly offer. The net result is that there's no negotiation on prices or part exchange valuations (because they know exactly what they can get for your car etc).
Assuming the above to be true and their vehicles are the cheapest, I actually commented that I'd almost prefer them to add a few hundred quid to the price they show on the windscreen so at least I'd be able to go through the charade of bartering and feel (however wrongly) I'd got a better deal.
So assuming this stance is accurate and this company is the cheapest in all the land, then I'd actually rather they'd lie to me so I could be more involved in the process. Not sure what that says about me, the company in question or the motor trade in general.
__________
__________
Watch out for PMICast coming to a pod catcher near you tomorrow - we will be re-visiting medical underwriting for personal clients tomorrow.
Saturday, 9 November 2013
Autonet Insurance ...... NOOOOOOOO !!!!!!
Now I work in insurance and if I don't follow up client leads then put simply I don't earn any money. I however am not a 'hard seller' and I always try to walk the fine line between chasing outstanding issues with clients reasonably without 'bothering' people.
I cam across an insurance business who work to a slightly different process than this. This week I used the car insurance 'bit' of Quidco (the cash back website) to look at some insurance pricing options for either an A4 or Q3 I'm considering when I change my car in 2014. I unfortunately for speed sake used my real mobile number on the data collection of the website. This was on Monday afternoon at around 4.00pm.
Since then I have had six calls from the people who provide the car insurance service : AutoNet Insurance. Each call has come from a different phone number (one mobile, three landlines, two 0845 numbers and one routed through a foreign exchange of some sort) the aim obviously is to prevent the recipient of calls knowing who's calling and avoiding a familiar number.
They won't take no for an answer and keep calling - this will not work with me, I will not be bullied into buying from them and surely no one else will either - it seems a pointless and totally non customer facing attitude to writing new business.
Please avoid like the plague !
I cam across an insurance business who work to a slightly different process than this. This week I used the car insurance 'bit' of Quidco (the cash back website) to look at some insurance pricing options for either an A4 or Q3 I'm considering when I change my car in 2014. I unfortunately for speed sake used my real mobile number on the data collection of the website. This was on Monday afternoon at around 4.00pm.
Since then I have had six calls from the people who provide the car insurance service : AutoNet Insurance. Each call has come from a different phone number (one mobile, three landlines, two 0845 numbers and one routed through a foreign exchange of some sort) the aim obviously is to prevent the recipient of calls knowing who's calling and avoiding a familiar number.
They won't take no for an answer and keep calling - this will not work with me, I will not be bullied into buying from them and surely no one else will either - it seems a pointless and totally non customer facing attitude to writing new business.
Please avoid like the plague !
Wednesday, 6 November 2013
Problem with Mavericks OSX 10
Had an annoying issue with my iMac running Mavericks, the new version of OSX.
The system slowed down over the space of 15 or 20 minutes before lunch then stopped. First it had constant kernel errors (the spinning beach ball) then it froze completely. Nothing would rouse it so I ended up having to do a hard reboot. Then on reaching the grey screen the thing froze there interminably. I ended up having to command and R to OSX recovery mode and reboot from there having repaired both the main and start up disks in Utilities. The whole process from start to finish took over 90 minutes - given that I had a similar crash on installing Mavericks and had never had any previous problems on the same Mac with Snow Leopard, Lion or Mountain Lion I'm assuming the issue is with Mavericks.
With this in mind I'm going to reiterate my earlier advice from a previous post (following the install issues I blogged about) and suggest that current users of previous versions of OSX 10 hold off on installing Mavericks pending some improvements and an update to the OS, hopefully to follow soon.
Tuesday, 5 November 2013
New (long delayed) episode of PMICast - my medical insurance podcast is now available
Well I've finally bitten the bullet and managed to record another episode of PMICast and uploaded it to the site and iTunes. Sorry for the delay - I think I've missed two or three weeks I think. The problem has just been finding time and a quiet place to record with relatives visiting, half term breaks and so forth - hopefully I can settle back into a more regular schedule for the rest of season 2. It may be that the weekly schedule was a little ambitious - so although I'm going to aim for weekly it might move to every second week instead lets see.
The new episode is aimed mainly at purchasers of medical insurance so please recommend the 'cast to anyone who needs new cover or would like a review of their existing plan either personal or group.
__________
The new episode is aimed mainly at purchasers of medical insurance so please recommend the 'cast to anyone who needs new cover or would like a review of their existing plan either personal or group.
__________
Monday, 4 November 2013
Introducer Support - how I add value
Followers of my blog and the introducers I currently work with rely on my support to assist them in advising on private medical insurance for their clients.
Why would an IFA refer business to a specialist intermediary like myself in the first place ?
Expert Advice in a technical area
Increased range of support for client
Develop a new area of business
No effort to expend
Marketing opportunities and material
An additional income stream
In short, my aim to is to offer my introducers a holistic service covering all aspects of prospecting for, marketing to and then advising clients on individual and corporate health insurance products.
For assistance with any of the above - if you're an IFA, accountant or other professional adviser - get in touch to discuss how my practice might be of assistance.
Tuesday, 29 October 2013
Have you tried to update to Mavericks (OSX) as of yet ?
Following the smooth transition to IOS 7 on iPhone and iPad (although I'm still not necessarily convinced it's actually better than IOS6 as present) I downloaded and (attempted) to install the new Mac OS on my iMac and Macbook over the last few days.
On my iMac it was literally a nightmare. Firstly the update kept failing partway through download. I'm guessing this was an artefact of Apples update servers not being able to cope although I waited two full days before attempting the download. Finally managing to download the update the installing effectively bricked my computer. I was forced to start up 'Cmd R' from the safe disk partition following a hard reboot, even then the base operating system was only partially functional and when I final managed to get things working the software refused to install and I had to repair the hard drive in disk utilities before the install proceeded. From there it took another two hours to complete everything. I might 'review' the changes later but in terms of performance there is a definite dip in speed and I'm having to turn off and reboot the machine daily to get things performing at anything like 'normal' functionality. At the moment I wouldn't recommend moving from Mountain Lion to Mavericks until the .01 revisions to improve performance come through.
On the MacBook Air (an older machine in fact) things have been smoother and although it took some coaxing the hard drive (used for Time Machine Updates) resisted the update and I needed to move the back up files to enable it. Having done this, following some quick research on-line the update worked fine and the machine is actually working a little faster than under Mountain Lion. It did take some finessing to get the machine to update to the new version of Pages however (which incidentally I hate along with Numbers - too IOS with missing functionality as compared to the old OSX versions).
All in all I'd probably suggest giving Mavericks a miss unless like me you just like to be up to the minute !
Monday, 28 October 2013
Strategies for reducing the cost of medical insurance
One of the issues I find with clients who are over the age of 50 is that as they make minor claims on their medical insurance policy over the life of the plan the premiums rise disproportionately due to the claims effect on the insurers no claims discount policy and in addition age increases and medical inflation effects can mean that with two or three years a plan that in year one is perfectly affordable can become eye-wateringly expensive in just 24 months.
I'm having this issue with 2 clients at the moment.
The problem is that with recent claims it isn't possible to move insurers and maintain full underwriting for the member. The options then are three fold :
1) remain where you are and pay the higher costs
2) remain but reduce benefits with the current insurer to reduce costs
3) move insurer, accept the increased underwriting but use the saving made monthly to self pay any conditions that are found to be excluded.
Option 3 seems like a bad idea and in many cases it is, especially if the conditions in question are serious. I would never recommend a move if the medical problem suffered were serious or life threatening even in potent. However, the premise of this thought exercise as per my opening remark is the effect of minor claims over time.
Assuming minor recent claims, look at the following pricing scenario (which whilst showing rounded premiums is indicative of real world pricing).
2011 premium : £ 195 per month
2012 renewal : £ 320 p.m.
2013 proposed premium : £ 530 per month
For this client we have decided together to move to a new plan that will impose a couple of minor new exclusions but the new premium will be around £ 250 per month - less than their renewal and over £ 280 per month less than the current insurer wanted moving forwards.
In essence, the £ 3,000 per annum we're now saving would more than cover any required treatment should the old (now excluded)medical conditions re-occur.
In one sense this example is quite extreme and most clients plans do not increase by this amount so quickly but there are as per the above cogent strategies we can put in place when this happens.
I'm having this issue with 2 clients at the moment.
The problem is that with recent claims it isn't possible to move insurers and maintain full underwriting for the member. The options then are three fold :
1) remain where you are and pay the higher costs
2) remain but reduce benefits with the current insurer to reduce costs
3) move insurer, accept the increased underwriting but use the saving made monthly to self pay any conditions that are found to be excluded.
Option 3 seems like a bad idea and in many cases it is, especially if the conditions in question are serious. I would never recommend a move if the medical problem suffered were serious or life threatening even in potent. However, the premise of this thought exercise as per my opening remark is the effect of minor claims over time.
Assuming minor recent claims, look at the following pricing scenario (which whilst showing rounded premiums is indicative of real world pricing).
2011 premium : £ 195 per month
2012 renewal : £ 320 p.m.
2013 proposed premium : £ 530 per month
For this client we have decided together to move to a new plan that will impose a couple of minor new exclusions but the new premium will be around £ 250 per month - less than their renewal and over £ 280 per month less than the current insurer wanted moving forwards.
In essence, the £ 3,000 per annum we're now saving would more than cover any required treatment should the old (now excluded)medical conditions re-occur.
In one sense this example is quite extreme and most clients plans do not increase by this amount so quickly but there are as per the above cogent strategies we can put in place when this happens.
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