One of many impacts from Covid has been an acceleration of the hardening market – the first hard market the industry has seen in many years.  IFAs and mortgage brokers may well have been aware of a hardening in rates in the PI market for a while due to the claims experience in this sector – but we are now seeing rates harden in many more lines across the industry.  Whilst this means that for many premiums will go up, for brokers this creates a window of opportunity.

Interested to know more? Read our full Mortgage Introducer article here

Future proofing

No one could have expected the challenging times we have encountered since March this year. Unprecedented. Or is it?

If we think back, there have been many challenging, difficult and at times destructive periods throughout history and even in the last 100 years. Spanish flu; two World Wars; the financial market crash of 1929; the financial crisis of 2008; and various winters of discontent to name a few. All of these will have proved extremely difficult for anyone in business at the time.

So, how much do we future proof ourselves? We simply do not know what is around the corner, and we have yet to really turn a corner with Covid-19. No-one knows what the world will look like next year or indeed 5 years down the line.

We have said on numerous occasions at events, in the press, and in one on ones with agents that those who diversified their product range and took a holistic approach that included general insurance, faired far better during the 2008 financial crisis. Every month they had a recurring income hitting their bottom line from previous sales of home, landlords, commercial, non-standard, high net worth and all other insurances required by their client. We heard so often during and after that period “it was the GI income that saved our business”, yet so many fell back into the old ways once mortgages and investment activity picked up saying “I don’t have time to do GI, I’m too busy with my core business”, yet we would argue GI is part of that core business.

We wonder how many of you have been thankful during lockdown for the income the GI book has brought in.

Of course, regulation has added immensely to your workload, but GI doesn’t have to be hard; eat into your time or add extra workload. GI providers are now more than ever providing introductions and referral services. If you don’t have the time, capacity or product knowledge, all you need to do is obtain the lead, pass the details to you GI provider and let them take on the compliance and work responsibility. Not only do you provide your clients with the support they need on their GI to make sure they have the right cover for their needs; you ring fence your clients from potential rivals and increase sales earning you additional and on-going renewal commission.

With no-one being able to predict the future, surely the time is now upon us to diversify the product range we offer to our clients. For mortgage brokers and financial advisers, that is expanding and future proofing your business by implementing a GI strategy.

Speak to your GI provider; do they offer an end to end GI service to help you build a strategy to embed GI into your business and provide that future proofing?

Make that call today. Find out how your GI provider can support you on this with strategy, process and support. Its about giving you the skills and tools, not just some training on how to use a GI system. If you are committed to implementing a GI strategy & process into your business, select a GI provider who can support you throughout the process.

Now is the time to future proof.