economic - trade school bečej

Education profile: insurance clerk

Tasks and activities
In office work, they mostly take care of existing insurance contracts. They process claims, contract changes, cases of damage and compensation. In the field, they provide consult for clients: analyse the needs for insurance, construct offers of policies or contract changes. They also investigate damages that refer to insurance contracts (they hire experts, if necessary), process documentation and forward it to the office.
Mainly, insurance clerks offer advice to clients, individuals or companies, and handle them both in office and field, including all kinds of cases – damages, compensations, general commercial work like accounting and control.

Work positions
Basically, insurance clerks are employed in insurance companies as mediators, representatives and insurance officers. Some might have a flexible working schedule that sometimes includes working in the office, sometimes on the field (visiting clients, travelling by car) and sometimes at home.

Insured, just in case!
For years, there has been a controversial debate: will the legal state pension be enough to maintain a living standard or is it inevitable to get a private pension? Many people have considered alternatives such as additional state-assisted private pension and many other kinds of private pensions, funds and life insurance. The insurance market has become very chaotic due to globalisation and international insurance conglomerates and a vast choice of individual insurance packages.

Working conditions
In offices of insurance companies and agencies, insurance clerks spend most of their time working inside the office, processing contracts, policies, comparing rates and statistics, making calculations… They have to be very detailed and careful since the clightest mistake can have very costly consequences. On the field work, they visit clients in their homes or companies and personally investigate cases of damages. Therefore, it is necessary for them to be able to adapt to clients in order to analyse the individual need for insurance protection and give consult.
Very often the conditions are difficult, their effort is futile, meetings are difficult to arrange, they can not choose the date, they have to meet deadlines and they work under a lot of pressure. Working from home is a little easier since individual offers are easily done on the computer unlike the huge insurance packages where it is necessary to work in a team, in the office. Most of the work is done on the computer and via Internet, logging on partners’ websites and making all the arrangements. The fax and the telephone are also very much used, especially the mobile phone when working on the field.