| Show 1 I CATCH UP ON WAR 41 WORK period of congestion and vexatious delays Is virtually at an end ANSWER WITH REAL LETTERS LETTER S strides strider of great importance made in bringing insurance business of bureau to an absolutely current basis washington announcement Is made by director K R G jones of the bureau of war risk insurance that the insurance division of the bureau Is virtually at the end of its period of congestion congest lon and consequent dissatisfaction and vexatious delays resulting from the lie great volume of work suddenly thrown upon it by the demobilization of the armed forces during the past yen year r former service aenice men tire are assured that they will aill be answered promptly from now on with real letters instead of with form pnra paragraphs rails or unsatisfactory form letters in all cases which require detailed and specific answers this is the first time that the bureau has been in a position to give this assurance su rance strides of great importance to the millions of former service men and their relatives and beneficiaries have boon been made toward bringing the insurance business of the bureau to 0 o an absolutely current basis in the prompt answering of mail and acknowledgment of premiums paid the records of accumulated work disposed of show conclusively such an enormous and distinctive improvement in the expediting of the business that it is confidently fi Il dently believed that within the next month the insurance division will be giving as rapid and accurate service e as do any efficiently managed organizations rt z tons 0 in ill commercial life catch up on mail for example the number of premiums which last october was approximately has just been reduced to an average of or less than one days work with other necessary operations in th the e handling of remittances a receipt will be sent pent out in a few days from the date of the original receipt of the remittance un unanswered answered mail in the Inq insurance urance division shows a reduction of approximately 60 per cent from the dally balance of five months ago probably it will be two or three weeks before it will be possible to answer all the letters as quickly as it Is now possible U lo 10 l lout L o out u t receipts for premiums it lefore a or of only a few bew weeks howe leforc ie forc the ansi answering of ofell nil letters in reference to insurance within four of their receipt in the bureau will be the regular pr practice actie in the alie meantime it Is inevitable that there gift will be some impatience on the part of those service men who in the past have experienced ct d in adjusting their insurance matters with the bureau as a result of delay or unsatisfactory information lut the progress now being made Indi indicates entes conclusively clu that these vexatious cases will be cleared up lip speedily and that thereafter although there will always of necessity as in any large organization be occasional errors and delays in the business in the bureau of war risk insurance these difficulties will be reduced to a relatively insignificant minimum in order to cope with the great flood of mall mail which came to the bureau coincident with demobilization of the armed forces each of the letters requiring searching of the records which in many cases was done by inexperienced personnel it was necessary to resort to form and paragraph letters in answering inquiries in struggling gling with the volume of excess mall mail which piled up in the bureau there Is no question but that a large percentage of it was wag answered improperly and frequently delayed many letters returned in a large proportion of the cases the service men themselves being unfamiliar with tile necessia essit Y of giving full information about thel their rc cases ases certificate numbers full dam names es dates of discharge etc rendered it impossible to answer properly their inquiries others failed to give proper addresses with the result that today num numbers bers of letters addressed to former service men by the bureau are being returned by postmasters from all parts of the country accompanied by statements that it Is impossible to find the addres addressee gee Prag fragmentary or insufficient information also inevitably tf rl bulted in ahn tin rais crediting of premiums due to lack inck of identification some idea of the emori enormity anity of the job may be gained from the fact that the most recent figures show that the total number of applications tor for insurance received by the bureau was totaling the premiums to march 1920 totaling approximately for a long period it was necessary tor for the bureau to typewrite all of its ita Ra dresses tills this meant reference to a d in each cadi case multiplying tile the chanced of errors and entailing an enormous amount of 1 abor abor with such fucali an unprecedented business na as came in the iho bureau was flooded with fillip applications leati onu inquiries remittances tc awl my wu WM a physical ability for the burbatt to mail to each of the lie men on its ils list information relative to the changes in rulings etc as rapidly as they were issued to make even one complete mailing to each ot of the millions of addresses and at the same time lime to cope the lie work of the bureau was III an almost insuperable task naturally much complaint developed on the ground that service men were unable to got get information about what the hureau bureau of war risk insurance was offering or was doing handicaps overcome very serious hand handicaps leaps in the addressing of the men have just been overcome through a special appropriation made by congreso con gres greis tile the bureau bure I 1 u has been enabled to put its entire list of former service men on andresso graph plates a n task which has required several months and which has completely monopolized the plate making section of a great factory in th the e bureau of war risk insurance itself over nine hundred people have been employed in putting the names and add addresses reses on the plates in addition to enabling the bernu to make full mailings mal lings of its most important in information to former service men and women the sending out of premium notice has been enormously facilitated the new system of printing both the premium notice and the premium receipt at the sarie sane time from the plate and by filing cling the returned notice in place of the premium receipt to credit the individual account with the remittance reduces to a minimum the possibility of misapplication of premiums received additional safeguard rests in III the fact that each ad plate carries the certificate or policy number find and the amount of premium regularly due from the he service man this prevents the errors that previously occurred through repeated copying with a 1 typewriter in a great business where here there are more than thirty million records including the names of more than fifty thousand johnstons johnsons etc and proportionately large numbers of smiths and browns occasional errors and misunderstandings were bound to develop but the ironing 7 put out process Is now so well under way that even s uch such discrepancies will be rapidly correct corrected od difficulties reduced the promptness with which premium notices can now be mailed Is expected to obviate largely the difficulties and vexations vexatious which hitherto have been occasioned by premium notices being mailed where the payments had already been made prom tor for premiums which 0 possible and will be carried oah largely do away atay with this except of course where here notices ay out in a previous month are forwarded before the current payments could be credited issuance ot of the insurance policies for the permanent converted government life insurance which are desired by all the men who are insured lins lias been delayed pending tile completion which now lias has been passed the new policies are now being completed by bt the actuarial and legal experts find and sent to the government printing office and it Is expected that they will be mailed out before june 1 with the insurance business of the bureau on a current basis it Is now anticipated that former service mw who have been deterred from keeping up tip their insurance by reason of the delays naich they had experienced in the handling of their accounts will take advant advantage of the very liberal provisions for the rein reinstatement of war risk insurance by the payment of two monthly premiums and a satisfactory statement of health and will gut get back on the books I 1 the new law has made the insurance ance very attractive by enlarging the list of permitted beneficiaries to in elude clude parent grandparent step par ent parent through adoption wife or husband child grandchild stepchild adopted child brother sister half brother half sister brother through adoption sister th through adopt adoption lon stepbrother stepsister uncle aunt nephew niece brother in law sister inlaw in law a person who mho has stood in fit the relation of a parent to the insured for a period of one year or more prior to the insurers reds enlistment or induction the children of such person parent grandparent stepparent step parent or parent through adoption of the In sureda reds wife or husband want permanent forms it Is also anticipated that the lie provision of the new law which permits lump surn sum payments at the option of tile the insured on converted policies ordinary life twenty payment life thir ty payment life 20 year endowment SO 30 year endowment and endowment at age sixty two will greatly increase tile the number of conversions into the permanent form of government life in insurance u rance more ilore than applications for the conversion of war risk policies into permanent frins f already have been received former service nn desiring to reinstate I 1 n war fisk isk insurance alch has lapsed or bacu canceled or to convert their insun tice nee in cases where it is now dow in torre foree should apply to any post of the lie am african legion the veterans of cf foreign wars or other argania eions of former service men army navy and II marine arine corps recruiting stations state insurance comm Nis loners any home service section of the amerlean american red cross salvation army knights of columbus welfare board Y X C A or to other f fraterno apt M organizations which are in a position to furnish blanks and debes necessary sa ry information |
