Assordid Commentary

AMERICAN INSURANCE COMPANIES EMBRACE OUTSOURCING Extracted from the Fell New Jersey Business and Thinktank Times American insurance companies have kept an eye on the effect on the bottom line experienced by computer firms, which reduce their cost of doing business by the creative move of outsourcing various activities. It seldom is observed that an insurance company has taken a step which will actually result in lower premiums to their customers. At the same time they are notoriously sensitive to lowering costs, while ignoring the fact that their notions may violate common sense. Thus it is that they continue to cut corners while insisting on using customers’ premiums to make losing investments. Some are now experimenting with moving their claims adjusting and customer service offices to third-world countries ("outsourcing", for those who have not experienced it. Or who have been trapped in a space station for the past year or so.). Outsourcing involves moving an operation such as customer support to a country like India, where English is spoken almost universally. Mercury Insurance Company, however, has taken outsourcing to the next logical step: it has opened an adjusting and customer service office in North Korea, where average weekly wages for an adjustor are as little as an egg. Other employees, such as typists, are paid somewhat less, while supervisors receive permission to go home at night. A company spokesman pointed out that by comparison, an employee with adjusting responsibilities in the United States costs over $725. "We have to look at the fact that your insurance company is saving over ninety-nine percent of the employee costs. This saving, of course, will be passed on to the consumer

forthwith, resulting in your insurance company becoming much, much more competitive." While admitting that there have been "some difficulties" with the fact that there is actually no tradition of English in North Korea, those problems are seen as trifling issues brought up by the claimant, and not the company’s. Since Mercury asserts it keeps "no data, records, correspondence nor statistics on claimants, it is unable to actually identify any persons who have complained", the spokesman declared. "We find that these adjustors in North Korea are a real pistol", where saving the company money is concerned. "There is a concern at the rudeness we have experienced lately from claimants. They seem to lose patience at the slightest aggravation. Conversations take from three to seventeen hours to complete, aided as they must be by the adjustor looking up virtually every word spoken by either the claimant or the adjustor. They are often, however, mercifully cut short when the claimant slams his or her phone down, cursing at the poor adjustor who, fortunately, as a rule does not understand the foul and regrettable language being used." The bottom line is certainly helped by the fact that claims by Americans, which may demand from Five Thousand to One Hundred Thousand Dollars, and more, are in sums which the North Korean adjustors are unaccustomed to dealing with. "Five Thousand Dollars is more than the total salary paid to all the mayors in North Korea, combined," noted one of the adjustors, whose English was impeccable. Tong Park, who got her start with Mercury this year because of her English skills, was soon elevated to supervisor and no longer deals with the public, with claimants, or with their customers.