Advice Process
What Does An Insurance Advisor Do?
We act in your best interests. We negotiate the best terms and insurance premiums for you, and we provide sound, qualified financial advice.
How Do We Look After Your Interests?
We follow a disciplined six-step process throughout in order to ensure the financial advice we provide is transparent, tailored, honest and in your best interests.
STEP
1
Establish and define our relationship
Prior to providing any financial advice, we will provide you with a first disclosure statement to ensure that you can make an informed decision on whether you would like to use our services or not. This first disclosure statement is publicly available on this web site. We define and agree on the scope of the services to be provided, the manner in which we will work with you, and also what we will not be doing for you. A second disclosure statement is then provided, recording what we undertake to do on your behalf to meet your insurance review needs and explaining our obligations and commitments to you.
STEP
2
Collecting client information: the Fact Find
We work with you to identify your personal and financial objectives, contingencies and priorities in the “Fact Find” – the purpose of which is to gather the necessary information that will allow us to accurately identify your objectives and protection needs.
STEP
3
Analysing your financial status: the Needs Analysis
This enables us to assess your existing risk and financial status, to identify the current gaps in your contingency plan and to prioritise the recommended insurance product(s) or action. The process involves considerable analysis of relevant options as a precursor to preparing our recommendations for your consideration.
STEP
4
Develop and present the financial advice recommendations: the Statement of Advice
Once the analysis of your information has been completed, we will undertake relevant product research and prepare a Statement of Advice report, aiming to meet your objectives, needs and priorities. This report will be presented to you along with an explanation of the rationale for the recommended insurance products, levels of cover and product providers. Further disclosure is also provided at the time advice is given, explaining any prospective commissions that may be received, our duties to you under the Code of Professional Conduct and informing you of our complaints handling and disputes resolution processes.
STEP
5
Implement your recommendations
We will agree with you on implementation of responsibilities which may include liaising with other insurance professionals (e.g. underwriters), and other activities required to secure products. We will help you to fill in application forms, explain the importance of honest disclosure, and the application process, including the possibility of medical tests if you’re applying for health insurance, for example. We will then present to the product provider(s) the relevant application forms and paperwork for the services within the Statement of Advice that have been accepted by the client. Before these are issued we will ensure you are informed.
STEP
6
Review
We will mutually agree with you on a process of ongoing review over time to ensure that as your personal and financial situation changes, we may revisit – if necessary – some of the earlier steps or complete a full review to ensure the existing covers are still appropriate to meet your needs. Triggers for a review may be things such as: change in mortgage situation, birth of children, change in income, redundancy, pregnancy – meaning impending stop of work – and other life events.