Every time a claim is declined, no matter what for and who declines it, everyone in the industry suffers.
FTA: What has the insurance world been doing to help support the wider community during the pandemic?
PH: Over and above claims, we have been working hard to support people during this period.
For example, one of our guys on the general insurance side had a 3D printer, and so made hundreds of pieces of PPE kit. Early on, Zurich donated 350,000 surgical masks to hospitals, hospices, air ambulance, police and health centres.
And we have contributed to the Covid-19 Support Fund, which was launched in May last year. The insurance industry has raised more than £100m, with £84m having been pledged in voluntary contributions from companies across the insurance and long-term savings sector.
All our partner charities have been contacted to see how Zurich's employees can support them with skills-based assistance, and our staff are encouraged to use their three allocated volunteering days a year as an opportunity to support people and communities affected by the Covid-19 crisis.
This exemplifies this sense of engagement that the insurance industry has with communities. This engagement has been amplified by Covid, I think, and it is heartening to see how much the industry has worked with consumers and communities in a way I hope that will be sustained.
FTA: We have also seen a rise in online scams and rogue operators during lockdown, targeting people with insurance adverts. What is Zurich doing to help stamp these out?
PH: These scams have been on the rise recently and it is a concern. We do share data and cases with others, especially where we have people ringing up purporting to be from Zurich.
This undermines the customer, the broker and the insurer, so we look to share information where these pop up. We will look into doing whatever we can do to reduce the scope for these scammers undermining brokers and customers, and to ride these rogues out of town.
Simoney Kyriakou is senior editor of FTAdviser
