About: What Is Insurance Twisting? | Policy Holders
Insurance Twisting occurs when an unethical agent from an untrusted insurance firm attempts to cancel your current policy and place it on the cancellation calendar.
When a consumer is lured into purchasing a new policy from the very same insurance company, twisting occurs where an unsuspecting policyholder is made to drain funds from their existing life insurance policy for an entirely new policy with another insurance provider.
Because agents usually make commissions from the policies they offer, unethical agents might resort to twisting to make more money while putting a burden on their customers.
Definition
When an insurance agent gets a client to drop their current insurance plan and sign up for a new, even though it is not in their best interest it is called as twisting insurance.
Why it is Unethical?
Since insurance agents attempt to push their clients to accept a much more expensive life insurance coverage than is necessary.
If you are shopping for life insurance, make sure that you are not pressured into purchasing coverage you don’t need or choosing an amount of coverage that you are not equipped to reasonably handle.
When you are shopping for life insurance, don t fall victim to unethical insurance sales tactics. You need to know what you are getting. You need to know what your coverage is actually worth.
How is Insurance Twisting Done?
Insurance twisters will often work with a client who has a very low or non-existent health insurance rating. They will persuade the individual that they need the highest possible coverage, even though the individual may actually be very healthy.
By offering them a special rate, the agent will convince them that they need a new policy. They may also try to get the individual to purchase an amount of coverage that is much too large for their budget. All of these tactics are dishonest, and you should avoid them at all costs.
Insurance twisting can also take place during the actual purchasing process. Instead of presenting the buyer with an accurate quote as obtained from an agency, the insurance industry will spend the time necessary to create a “preview” of the quote.
This is a bogus quoting that was created four hours ago using outdated data. The insurance industry will usually have this quote on hand for a few days, which means it is still in four hours ago when the buyer attempts to receive it.
Example
The insurance industry will typically create a quote using the most accurate information that is available. Then they will use a computer program to generate a “guestimate” of how much coverage will be required for the cost of $250 million.
A lot of this “guestimate” comes from ” CAM” or Computer Assisted Policy Research. However, the estimates generated by this program were pulled during the last few minutes before the policy was being applied for, making them extremely premature.
There are two specific elements of insurance twisting. First, a salesperson will induce the policy owner to purchase more coverage than they actually need, usually through incomplete comparisons.
Second, the deceptive quote will cause the policy owner to pay more money for their insurance. In order to understand what is insurance twisting, you must understand how these two elements work.
To begin with, an individual will apply for insurance and then will ask their agent or broker to pull out the old quote to make the new one.
When this happens, it’s considered “culling”. The agent or broker doesn’t want the customer to realize how much they’ll be spending on their new policy. Therefore, they will likely tell the client that their old quote was incorrect.
They will say something like “you can expect to pay about thirty percent more for this type of coverage” or “your current agent just took your rate down”. This is an unethical marketing tactic known as “culling”.
Conclusion
Insurance twisting also occurs when the agent or broker pulls the “old rate” during renewal. In order to complete the paperwork for a new life policy, many people need to pay upwards of three times what they paid for their premiums in the last year.
What they don’t realize is that this three hundred dollars increase in cost comes from their incorrect “inflation adjustment factor”. When the adjustment is corrected, they can charge customers three hundred dollars more per year, but if they have already pulled the older policy out of the window they can continue to charge customers this high price.
This is why it’s vital that consumers get up close and personal with their life insurance agents because when they are given a sweetheart deal at renewal they are tempted to stick their neck out by raising their rates anyway.
