Protecting your business for tomorrow…

Hindsight is an exact science. How often do we think, we would have done it differently “if only we’d known”.

The proliferation of websites purporting to provide advice based on a few general questions and algorithms, coupled with the commoditisation of the insurance broking market, is leading to a crisis in the quality of advice available to businesses and private individuals.

The wider context

The insurance broking market today, like many professional services, has gone through a period of consolidation. As a result, many community-based insurance brokers have been bought by large nationals or multinationals and subsumed into larger, less personal businesses, with limited insight into local markets, and a lack of care for relationships. People’s efforts, which were once largely focused on nurturing relationships with clients, have become introspective; focused on financial reporting, internal management meetings, and the profit motive. In my view, the clients, and the quality of advice they deserve, have been lost in the dash for scale.

An advice methodology

Good advice is not an off the shelf answer or click of a button solution. In its purest form, good advice, relies on an intimate understanding of each client’s business, its goals and its markets. It’s about looking at each individual or business holistically, identifying the risks that are prevalent and building a strategy to mitigate, transfer or accept them. It is this diagnostic process which is at the heart of sound advice.

The best advisers anticipate emerging risks (as well as dealing with traditional issues). They reflect on concerns that keep a business owner awake at night – such as the war for talent or the loss of a key person in a business, or equally importantly in these times of remote working, the exposure businesses have to a cyber-attack or data breach.

By proactively exposing and managing the risks or fault lines in your business, a good adviser will work through the detail, ask the killer questions, and help safeguard your future and protect tomorrow...and for that, you need insight, technical knowledge, and a commitment to seeing issues through the lens of the client. In other words, you need an experienced adviser.

About Partners&

Partners& is a Chartered insurance broker providing specialist insurance, employee benefits, risk management and claims advice to businesses and private clients. Through our collective experience, we’ve observed many of the best and worst practices in the insurance advisory model. We’re here to challenge the status quo and we aim to establish a new level of service by combining the best traditions of broking, such as technical advice and client service, with modern thinking and intelligent use of technology, to enhance the client experience and create a dynamic workplace for our talented team.