Zurich Direct Reviews

Pros

Training is by far the best thing they do. I was sent on nearly day one to the home office in Overland Park, Ks. for a two week long training session. They follow that up with weeks more of training.

Cons

They expect a lot. And they expect it on day one. You are put out on the street to take your lumps and learn your way.

Advice to Senior Management

When you assign someone a mentor, make sure that the mentor is both ready, willing and able to help the newbie.

Pros

The people are generally friendly.
Easy to have a life outside of work.
Compensation is pretty good for an internship.

Cons

People are incredibly inefficient (several coffee breaks/long lunch breaks/visiting friends on different floors for hours/leaving work early) even though they complain that they're understaffed.
People (including the management) don't even try to engage in how our work relates to current events (it's clear that most employees don't read the newspaper/know what's going on).
There are so many teams/such an enormous hierarchy that lots of contracts/issues are sent from team to team without accomplishing anything.

Advice to Senior Management

Downsize. There are too many teams, and the teams are too big... and your employees take full advantage of that.

Pros

Compensation was fair and above others in the industry and the product was superior.

Cons

Changes to the product diminish its value. Employee compensation ceiling has been greatly reduced.

Advice to Senior Management

There is something to be said for advanced education. Many in senior management seem to have been promoted for who they know not what they know.

Pros

The close relationship with the insureds (as well as sales and underwriting) made this an unusually good environment for a claims person.

Cons

Zurich Direct (formerly Universal Underwriters) is, in my opinion, being slowly but methodically dismantled as it is brought further into the Zurich fold as part of Zurich Programs (former Empire Fire & Marine) and Direct Markets. When it was self-managed, there was a lot of communication throughout the management hierarchy, which made up for a lack of training and consistency at times. But once Zurich became the active manager, the dismantling began. First the back office functions and a few adjusters. Then another round of layoffs in 09/08 (of which I was a part) which led to essentially a token claims presence in the smaller service areas. This year the service areas will be losing their local underwriting raters as this, too, becomes centralized. I know it is the way of the future, but it is a difficult thing to see happen to a company whose motto was once "Uncommonly Close to the Customer."

Advice to Senior Management

For the last two years there has been a feeling of tentativeness in the field -- inevitability in some cases. I don't know that you're getting the best work out of people when they fear that any day they could be asked to gather their immediate personal belongings and be shown to the door. I believe senior management within programs/Direct throughout 2007 and 2008 was very focused on its own future within Zurich, which led to less communication than usual to lower management and staff.

Pros

Salary was competitive for my job. Time off benefits were decent. It is mostly an 8-5, 40 hr/week job. Other than on-call duties, there is not much evening or weekend work needed. Fairly laid back workplace.

Cons

Major initiatives to outsource and off-shore IT work.

Major layoffs in the IT areas.

Morale in the IT department was low and moving lower.

There is a concerted effort to outsource all software development, support, and eventually higher level IT work. In April of 2008, 26% of the IT department was laid off. The general feeling is that this will be at least an annual event.

Cube farm! Noisy!

Advice to Senior Management

Quit trying to spin the outsourcing and off-shoring reasons. The employees directly working with the "Co-sourcing partners" can see the increased costs of the model, and the lower quality. There has been no rational explanation of how this will benefit the company.