Q: I liked one of your questions related to insurance career. As a student I am interested in joining the insurance industry. Could you provide me the options and benefits available to the freshers, like me, who are interested in pursuing career in insurance? I am interested in taking an engineering degree along with insurance. A: It is good that you have decided to make insurance a career at an early age. Insurance companies do have a shortage of engineers. One of the specialist fields of insurance is known as Engineering Insurance. It encompasses construction (civil, electrical and mechanical) risks, machinery breakdown, boiler insurances, aviation insurance, plant and equipment insurance etc. Also engineers have other areas in insurance industry where they can add value. First one is Risk Management, where most of the insurance companies prefer to hire engineers. The other area is Loss Adjusting. In this field you have insurance companies which have loss adjusting teams and specialist organizations like surveyors and loss adjusters. Apart form these, you may also choose insurance marketing as your career. While pursuing your engineering studies you may simultaneously write professional insurance examinations which are held twice a year. Q: One of my personal cars was insured with a major insurance company. I had insured the vehicle for SR 130,000. During the policy period I met with an accident. I hit the roadside railing and my vehicle toppled and turned. My vehicle was totally damaged and I was hospitalized for a week. My insurance company settled the claim for SR90,000. Later, I felt that I was pressurized to accept the amount. How can they reduce my claim by 40,000? A: Most insurers fail to inform the insured about the significance of estimate of the insured vehicle. In most of the cases, where the vehicle is total loss, the insured feels that the insurance company has cheated him whilst settling the claim. But the fact may be different. It is the responsibility of the insured to provide a right estimate of the value of the car to the insurer. The correct procedure for settlement of total loss claims is to pay to the insured the market value i.e. replacement value of similar make and model or insured value of the vehicle, whichever is less. Any recoveries and deductibles are debited from the gross amount. If you could buy similar vehicle (the one which you were using at the time of accident) manufactured in that particular year for around SR90,000 then the settlement is reasonable. However, if the similar vehicle costs more than SR90,000 then you should not have accepted the settlement. If you are sure about the market value being higher than the settled value, then you can pursue with your insurer to re-consider their settlement. * Shujaath Ahmed Khan, an MBA, General Manager, Creative Associates is also a consultant and an expert in Insurance, Investments and Real Estate. He can be contacted at [email protected], website-www.creativeassociates.blogspot.com. __
