Why Ratings Are Important When Choosing an Insurance Company

Ratings can help you decide between competing and competitive health plans. Many believe that the best way to be sure that you get the right health coverage for your needs is to compare the ratings of several different insurance companies.

The individual company's competitive forces, changing fundamentals and financial strength are all taken into account when they are compared through the use of health insurance ratings. This is imperative because if the health insurance company will no longer be able to pay out future benefits or claims then naturally any other considerations become completely unimportant. These various ratings are available online and there are several different ways of computing these ratings, using companies such as Standard and Poor's Insurer Financial Health Strength Rating, Credit Watch and Fitch Ratings Insurer Financial Strength Rating. These company's ratings offer you their opinions on the health insurance company's financial strength and what the potential is for them being able to meet the obligations that it has to their policy holders in a timely manner. These health insurance ratings do not take into consideration how willing the insurance company is to pay out on their obligations nor does it rate the quality of how well they service the handling of claims.

Ratings are normally done on a scale of "Triple-A" to "CC"; the insurance companies that have the notations "NR" have not yet been rated. Naturally, the health insurance companies that have the "Triple-A" rating are considered to have very strong financial stability characteristics and of course, those with the "CC" rating are believed to have weak or poor financial stability characteristics. Those companies with health insurance ratings of "BBB+" or higher are still considered secure, while those that have "BB+" or even lower are considered to be vulnerable.

The plus or minus sign (+, -) that may follow the ratings in the "AA" to "CCC" categories show what the relative standing is within the major categories that are rated. There are times when some companies will have health insurance ratings of "DDD" and it is normally used to designate that the company has either been given some kind of regulatory intervention or that they may have failed to pay out benefits in a timely manner.

You should keep in mind that these health insurance ratings do no take into consideration any kind of cancellation or surrender penalties, the likelihood of whether or not fraud may be used in order to deny any claims or the amount of the deductibles. Other things not taken into consideration are what the possible potential would be of certain foreign exchange restrictions possibly preventing or delaying any financial responsibilities being met.

Any of these ratings can be suspended, withdrawn or changed due to the change in the information that is provided by the health insurance companies; so be sure that you check the ratings that were done at different times.

Click here to learn about Health Insurance Ratings and how to make Health Insurance Comparisons.

Insurance Documentation - Why Strain Your Nerves?

Home or Medical insurance, the paper work and documentation are nerve-wrecking exercises, not just for people soliciting insurance policies, but also for insurance companies that prepare these policies. An insurance executive based in Philadelphia, spent six to seven hours at an average preparing documents for the company, leaving very little time for him to sell policies, for which the company actually hired him in the first place.

Another executive based in Milwaukee had to stay back two hours to complete the motor insurance documents of his clients. It was frustrating he said, to find everyone leaving the office when it closed, but he had little choice and had to stay back for completing the documents. Many executives work over-time to complete the documentary obligations, leaving them little time to spend on other important issues.

The Health Insurance documentation requires a lot of effort running into several pages, so also the auto insurance, business insurance, home insurance, and life insurance. The insurance claim documents mainly consists of checklists, crash reports, diagrams, forms, general reference notes, legal references, letters, maps, medical references and policy forms etc.

Many insurance companies now use online typing services; they hire offshore companies on the internet to provide documentation related to insurance claims. The insurance company executives use a digital voice recorder and record the dictations into them and through a USB cable transfer the recording to a computer, and through the email send the voice file to the off shore vendor for documenting the narrations. Some use the microphone on the computer for recording the dictations, instead of using a portable voice recorder.

This saves them valuable time from typing the documents themselves, besides saving them costs. The offshore companies most of which that are located in India provide the service at one third of the costs, because of the difference in time zones the insurance executives send the dictations to their Indian counterparts in the evening, just before closing time and the following morning the documents arrive into their email. The company executives are relieved now, no one stays back anymore to complete the insurance documentation, its all sent offshore.

Insurance claims transcription

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