Comic George Carlin is famous for a routine he did many years ago about the 'Seven Words you Can't Say On Television.' Carlin got into a lot of trouble with the FCC over his explicitness, but he was right on target about language and communication. Words, Carlin noted, are our most important means of communication. Yet words can be our friends or they can be our enemies.
Insurance words are often, ironically, enemies of the insurance industry. Insurance folks-even the ones who know better-repeatedly use words that don't say what they mean or mean what they say.
Here's my hit list of insurance words that repeatedly abuse the industry's relationship with its customers.
Read them and weep, if you're guilty.
- INSURED This one should be banished from the insurance dictionary. Use it and get your mouth washed with Borax. The 'insured'? For heaven's sake, it's the customer! 'Policyholder' is not quite as bad. Or maybe 'client.' But not 'insured.'
- CARRIER always cracks me up when I hear this. 'Okay, Mrs. Throttlebottom, I'll try to call a few carriers and see if they'll accept you as an insured.' Sounds like the insurance company's located on a military battleship. How about just 'insurance company.' It's that simple.
- EXPOSURE Oh, boy. This gets used a lot with the news media, and then we complain about our coverage. The exposure, of course, is simply the riskiness. A wood-shingle roof has a greater risk of burning than an asphalt roof.
- LINE Another word that is simply unnecessary. I prefer to talk about different 'types' of insurance. 'Line' makes sense to me if you're taking about retail products like shampoo and children's toys. But in this era of packaged, multiple-peril policies, the word just doesn't add to anyone's understanding about the product.
- SURPLUS Yes, you're laughing. My insurance executive students giggle when I display this word on poster-size type. It even looks as bad as it sounds. But every insurance pro in the room knows that he or she will fall back on this when someone asks them to explain how insurance companies managed to handle that last hurricane. 'Well, they have the surplus to fall back on.' Surplus? I thought you said the industry lost its shirt last year. Now you're talking about some silo full of extra cash they've got stashed away. Come on, people, there are better words. Use net worth, equity, whatever you want, but never use the 'S' word. If you must use it, then explain it immediately.
- CASUALTY, and its snooty cousin, LIABILITY You're kidding yourself if you think the average consumer or news reporter knows what these words mean when talking about insurance coverages. I once had a grown adult ask me if his insurance company was 'reliable' for the damage to his house. And he wasn't referring to the company's solvency. You get a star on your forehead if you explain to customers that liability coverage, simply put, pays for damages you do to somebody else.
- LOSS RATIO ... COMBINED RATIO.. ANYTHING RATIO Again, I don't mind if you use them, but you've gotta define them. Just say, 'For every dollar we collected insuring this fiasco, we paid $1.10 in claims and expenses.' Stop there and say no more.
- NO-FAULT AUTO This otherwise brilliant product should probably sue the insurance industry for abuse and neglect. No wonder most states don't have No-Fault insurance. No one knows what in the world it is. A thousand spiders in your pajamas if you use the terms 'PIP benefits' and 'tort threshold' without first putting them in plain English.
- FIRST-PARTY and THIRD-PARTY coverages Sometime shortly before customers' eyes glaze over, they wonder who's on 'first' and who's on 'third'-not to mention why all of this is called a party. Cheers for the companies who say to heck with the corporate attorney and rewrite the sales brochure to read, 'This coverage pays money to YOU, and this coverage over here pays the bucks to the other person. Any questions?'