27th June 2007

Dear colleague,

I was not expecting to write to you about floods in June ...but we are once again being hit by sustained bad weather and this has resulted in human tragedy as well as impacts on homes and businesses.

As a result of flooding, we have seen a rise in calls to all of our Claims centres. Over 13,000 storm and flood claims have been registered and we anticipate that this will increase over the next couple of weeks.

We've instigated our Emergency Response Plan: what does this mean to you and your customers?

Helping you

To help make the claims process as hassle free as possible for you and your clients, we've put a number of measures in place to help you through this:

• Employees are working additional shifts to cover higher call volumes
• In Household, Loss Adjusters are on scene where most needed and we are increasing the capacity of Loss Adjusters by extending the current panel
• Our own Property Hub Asprea lost electricity supply overnight and there were logistical issues for staff due to major road closures. As a result, and to maintain customer service quality levels, some work has been transferred to the hubs in Bromley and Cardiff
• We are focussing our builder network on emergency situations and we will allow customers to use their own repairers in respect of the smaller storm claims to allow the Property Hub to deal with the more serious and larger losses
• In Motor, we have a rapid response team of motor engineers on the ground in Sheffield who will deal with customers face-to-face and carry out on-site assessment of affected vehicles
• We are dealing with mobility as a top priority and arranging a hire vehicle and fast tracking 'total loss' vehicles with the aim of settling the claim on the same day

Helping your clients through this

We appreciate that in some cases you like to be involved in your customers' claims. To help them notify their claims in the quickest and easiest way please ask your customers to follow these fives steps that will make the claim's process as hassle-free as possible:

1. Call our 24-hour helpline as soon as possible to notify us of the claim:

   • 0800 01 23 45 for Household
   • 0500 11 44 77 for Commercial Property
   • 0800 67 89 99 for Motor

   For clients who suffered serious damage to their premises, ask them to call us directly for advice on emergency repairs to protect their property from any further damage, and to get an estimate. We can approve emergency repairs up to £1,000 straightaway.

2. Ask your client to be clear and precise about the date that damage was sustained and the exact nature of the damage. Two things really help here:

   1. Support your clients in compiling an inventory of their damaged personal and business property (including age, manufacturer, model, model number, date of purchase and current purchase price).

   2. If your clients have a camera to hand, encourage them to take photographs of the damage.

3. Make sure that you have your client's policy number when making a claim and that your client has provided us with up-to-date home and mobile numbers (so that we can get in touch if we need to without delay).

4. We'll review every single claim, but it's sensible for us to place priority on emergency cases first - for instance if business premise is flooded and inaccessible. Help us help the hardest hit by deferring claims that aren't urgent.

5. For brokers with delegated authority please follow the advice above where appropriate and we'll continue to do everything we can to support you at this busy time.

We will provide a further update in the next few days.

In the meantime, we thank you for your continuing support and are doing everything to ensure that your clients receive the service that they expect from you and Norwich Union.

Regards,

John Kitson

Director
Intermediary Business
Norwich Union

Published: 28/06/2007