How NTUC Income reduce our repair cost

Editor
Forum Page
Straits Times

I refer to the letter from Sam Yeow entitled "It cost more to use insurer's outlet" (St Times, 19 Nov 2005).

Mr Yeow said that insurers who insist that repairs be done at their authorised workshop may pay more for their repair. He quoted his own case, where he could arrange his own repair for $300, but his insurer eventually paid $3,580 for the same repair done at its authorised workshop.

I agree with Mr Yeow. This is a common situation and result in higher repair cost and higher premiums.

NTUC Income does not use the method described by Mr Yeow. We adopt a multi-faced approach to reduce the repair cost, as follows:

- If the damages are slight, we encourage our policyholder to pay for his own repair, and protect the No Claim Discount. The saving in premium, due to the discount, can be more than the repair cost.

- Alternatively, we are willing to offer a cash settlement for the policyholder to arrange his own repair. The policyholder can find a workshop to repair for less, and keep the difference.

- If we have to pay for the repairs, we will invite our quality workshops to tender for the repair, and observe our quality standard. In this situation, the workshop will not submit an inflated bill as the repair will not be awarded to them.

We have implemented the above approach quite successfully over the past few years. This has allowed us to reduce our repair cost and offer competitive premiums to our policyholders. Our premiums are about 10 percent lower than the market.

Tan Kin Lian
Chief Executive Officer
NTUC Income