Diary of a Risk Assessor – March
I was asked to “take over” a telephone call that came into our Office last week.
A nice French Woman who had been renting her London House to Groups of Students for the last couple of years had renewed her House Insurance, via a Telephone Call to a different Insurance Company, having become disillusioned with the previous one. The person on the other end of the line had taken some of her personal details and then had paused and advised her that the call was being taped, for, “training purposes and reference.” Up until then the whole process had been casual and friendly, but she felt that the whole tone had changed as the person on the other end of the line told her that he would be asking a series of questions and said,
“It will help if you just give me a Yes or No answer.”
Because of the change in tone and a bad experience with the previous Insurance Company, the Woman concentrated on the questions and even more to her answers. She felt as if she was being unnecessarily cautious and then she was asked,
“Do you intend to meet all of the Legislative Requirements in regards to renting your property on a Commercial basis?”
“I don’t understand.” She said. “What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry.” The person on the other end of the line said, “Let me go through that again. Do you intend to meet all of the Legislative Requirements in regards to renting your property on a Commercial basis?”
“Are you talking about declaring the earnings?”
“And the other requirements in regards to renting your property on a Commercial basis.”
“Are you talking about those with Fire?”
“Yes, all Legislative Requirements.” The man said in exactly the same tone.
“Are you referring to one of those Fire Risk Assessments, as I am not sure that I need that?”
There was a silence from the person on the other end of the line before he said,
“Could I suggest that you research exactly what the Legislative Requirements are before we continue…”
“And so I hung up and called you.” She told me. “So I suppose I need a Fire Risk Assessment, Yes?”
“Yes you do.”
“So why didn’t he just tell me?”
Perhaps it’s more financially beneficial for the Insurance Company to speak in generalisations and not identifying the specifics of Insurance requirements until they do so in reply to a claim. But I only said that as an internal monologue and said to her,
“Tell me again the address of your property, Post Code, number of Bedrooms, Habitable rooms, Garden……………..”
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