An individual who would like to become an insurance assistant should have great organization skills. Likewise, he or she should be able to follow orders, meet deadlines, and communicate well with supervisors, colleagues, and clients. To become an insurance assistant, it is necessary that you earn a high school diploma or an equivalent degree. While it is not essential that you earn a college degree, it is important that you are comfortable using computers and learning new kinds of software. Office administration courses are good alternatives to four-year academic programs for people who are worried about the time and money required to attend college.
Insurance assistants work in insurance companies and perform tasks such as preparing and organizing insurance claims and other documents, processing claims, and taking payments. An insurance assistant also performs customer service tasks, such as answering phones and accessing client records to provide customers with requested information. Insurance assistants have access to sensitive data regarding clients' medical histories and finances, so it is common for employers to perform background checks on job applicants.
If you would like to become an insurance assistant, related job experience might be more valuable than formal academic preparation. After you earn a high school degree or equivalency diploma, your next step should be to take a customer service position. Get experience answering phones, entering client information into electronic databases, and practicing some of the tenets of customer satisfaction.
Ideally, anyone who wants to become an insurance assistant should consider taking an entry level customer service position in the insurance industry. A phone operator position, for example, can serve as a great introduction to the insurance business. In this role, you can learn how to speak to insurance clients, how to direct phone calls, and perhaps even how to retrieve client records. These functions can provide you with an education in how insurance companies are structured. This also can be an opportunity for you to learn insurance terminology.
If possible, you should take an entry level position in a smaller insurance company. A phone operator in a large company, for example, might have a limited view of how a business operates because there probably are many different departments and hundreds, or even thousands, of employees. A smaller company, on the other hand, might provide an entry level employee with a more valuable education since he or she is more likely to perform a number of different tasks.
