Thursday 20 November 2014

Private Medical Insurance - a guide on my You Tube Channel

Individual medical insurance can be a bit of a minefield. There are lots of insurers out there all offering different variations of product and plan options.

There there's the question why do you need the cover in the first place ?

In the latest video on my new You Tube Channel : Purely Medical Insurance I've just posted a new four minure video that simply take you through what medical insurance is, who should have it and why then what to expect from the cover.

If you're interested in speaking to a professional FCA regulated adviser with over 20 years experience in the field please feel free to contact me as below  :

Telephone - 07792 075748
E-mail - philknight@pch.uk.com

You can also subscribe to the You Tube Channel, direct message the video podcast at pmicast@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter @philknightpch

Disgraceful reporting by Good Morning Britain over I'm a Celebrity

First of all can I start this post by sending condolences to the family of Craig Charles this morning. I found out overnight that the Red Dwarf and Coronation Street actors brother passed away yesterday at the age of 52 - I have been a fan of Craig for many years (as a life long SF fan and watcher of Red Dwarf from day one) and thus far he had been the highlight of this years I'm a Celebrity.

That being said I was outraged this morning when Good Morning Britain presenters Richard Arnold and Kate Garraway spent seven or eight minutes interviewing one of Gemma Collins TOWIE cast mates about her comedic departure from the show (I'm A Celebrity) yesterday. Having had a good laugh about that (literally) the follow up to that segment was to mention that Craig Charles was also leaving the program following the sudden death of his brother. That was it, no commiseration or discussion of his input into the show and then worse of all, they went back to laughing about Gemma. Garraway managed to get out a "very sad news" comment between guffaws but that was it. The story was largely ignored when it should have lead and the way it was treated was brutally insensitive and I hope none Craigs family was watching.

How is it possible that a death in the family should play second fiddle to an obese and talentless reality star who for four days did nothing but utter inanities.

I think it shows a level of unprofessionalism and journalistic poor judgment on the part of both presenters on GMB and the editorial staff. I would complain directly to them but of course, a reality TV star is always ratings gold and GMB can't afford not to pick up the floating TOWIE viewer.

This really is tabloid TV appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Friday 14 November 2014

My new You Tube Channel - Purely Medical Insurance

You can find my new You Tube Channel by clicking on this link :

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC17lLgjyCuyQoQYCbtToGEg

The plan is to put new vides on medical insurance related topics every fortnight. The first video is a general introduction to me and my practice and then the next video planned is an overview of personal medical insurance.

If you'd like to know more about this kind of insurance or need some help with your cover there are full details on the videos.

** 20th November 2014 update **

Ive just added a new video giving an overview of personal medical insurance cover - please check it out at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0wOdjaZtGs

Friday 7 November 2014

You Tube and PMICast #59

Two main issues to cover off in todays blog post.

Firstly the new episode of PMICast (the UK's only podcast devoted to medical insurance) is now live and downloadable in all the usual places plus on-line at www.pmicast.podbean.com. Even though I haven't had the chance to record and upload an ep for about a month the downloads are still looking good and several thousand people per month are listening so please continue.

I have also today set up and begun to upload to a new, more salesy You Tube Channel which hopefully over time will become a companion piece to the audio podcast.

You can see the first video, an introductory affair over at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGqeCi75qgQ

The aim of the new channel is to have a single issue video-cast between 2 and 6 minutes long that is scripted (as opposed to the off the cuff podcast). In future editions I'll talk more about my practice, work with introducers and other specific PMI related topics. I have some interesting ideas for the channel so please watch this space.

Lastly, thanks to everyone who has been returning to the blog over the last three or four days. From posting virtually nothing in October I've been trying to get some content up and running and the site visits have been exceptional - Wednesday was the second highest number of visits to the blog ever and it looks as if today might actually beat the target - so please keep reading and tell all your friends !

Thanks

Phil

Wednesday 5 November 2014

Setting up a new IFA Introducer

I had this idea this afternoon to run through on the blog (and other on-line sources) a current case study running through the process of finding, working with and then setting up a new introducer for private medical insurance. I've found these blog posts covering my work with introducers to be amongst the most popular on the blog and immensely useful to me from a business point of view - my google searches for this area are very strong and I regularly pick up new introducers on the back of people reading my copy and replying or feeding back.

Finding the introducer

The case I will use as the main 'inspiration' in this article is a Wealth Management multi adviser IFA practice based in the South East of England. I first contacted them in April/May this year.

We came across each other via Linkedin and I began speaking initially to their compliance manager. After a week or two of send e-mails back and forth I arranged to meet one of his colleagues for a coffee in Leeds when he was visiting one of their advisers in the local area. This session was really a 'getting to know you' meeting and we discussed in the main my experience, advisory process and both organisations due diligence process for working with other parties.

I tend to find my introducers in one of two ways, the first is fairly obvious as I work with a number I have had dealings with in the past, primarily advisers I interacted with between 1994 and 2007 when I worked as a broker consultant for a variety of medical insurers (WPA, Guardian Health, PPP, BCWA Healthcare, Standard Life Healthcare and First Assist). I do also regularly find them via Linkedin (check out my profile here) and find this business social network enormously useful and I suspect I will use it more and more in coming years.

Building the relationship

The initial session described above went extremely well (to the point that the individual I met with referred me to his brother who is an adviser with another company to look at a case for him) and following referral upwards to director level I ended up travelling South in early October to present to the person who historically had dealt with non-regulated products in the business and was keen to include PMI in a suite of general insurance products he was putting together. As is often the way we were really speaking from the same song sheet and we were able to agree a plan whereby I would present to the teams sales meeting in the near future. The presentation format was agreed and I actually did this presentation earlier this week.

Sales Presentation

The basis of my sales presentation to this kind of audience is to keep things high level and non-technical. My job is not to teach advisers about PMI but rather to give basic knowledge and thus confidence to raise PMI with the right kind of client. So I generally use a five or six slide overview of
me and my practice including details of the medical insurance market, how my advisory practice works with introducers and their clients and finally some key sales and client segmentation support.

The Premier Choice Healthcare introducer process.

Again this presentation went extremely well and we are now in the process of filling in the paperwork to set up the introducer agreement. I am also awaiting details to quote on the IFA's own medical insurance scheme to review as well !

Although I won't detail all the paperwork and admin process here, the introducer agreement process we use is a two stage affair. Firstly I need to collate some basic regulatory, due diligence and identity information in an introducer 'fact find' which I then send over to the Premier Choice compliance team who check with the FCA database and then issue the final introducer agreement for checking and final sign off.

The above process whilst not necessarily 'standard' (some introducers take more work and some less) is certainly representative of the kind of work I do when creating the relationship with a new introducer, particularly in the IFA sector - of course, having done all this is when the hard work of developing business for and with the new introducer begins in earnest.

if your practice or anyone you know would like to work with me in developing medical insurance as an income stream for your business and to offer better advice for your clients please do feel free to contact me :

07792 075748
philinight@pch.uk.com

I look forward to speaking.

Tuesday 4 November 2014

Shameless Plug for medical insurance

I'm a medical insurance intermediary.

If you either need new medical insurance or a review of your current plan I can help.

I also work with IFA's, Accountants, General Brokers and so on who refer their medical insurance clients to me in return for a share of the commission.

You can visit my medical insurance website at http://pch.uk.com/consultants/phil-d-knight/
for further information on who I am, what I do and which products I can help with.

Suffice to say I work with individuals, families, companies, the self employed, high net worth clients based both in the UK and around the world.

Feel free to contact me for more information - philknight@pch.uk.com or 07792 075747.

I'm fully FCA regulated via my compliance provider : Premier Choice Healthcare FCA number 312878.

Important changes to Linkedin and my You Tube Channel

Been another busy few weeks and having come back from holiday at the weekend there are no signs of change.

However I am keen to work harder and more effectively on my marketing and client support. With that in mind I am planning to revamp a few things.

The PMICast podcast will evolve and change - more on that in coming weeks.

I've already started to overhaul my Linkedin profile - see more about that by checking out my Linkedin page - uk.linkedin.com/pub/philip-knight/1a/b47/58b/
I've already updated the background, added a better image picture and changed the website links so they firstly describe what they do but also actually work !

I am also planning to re-launch and update my You Tube channel to make it both more professional and also useful to clients. Hopefully I can also popularise PMI a little bit more and get a few more hits in the process. As it stands I have a few plans and will update on th blog as we go, in the meantime please feel free t visit the current Channel at : https://www.youtube.com/user/pkn439/videos

So the message as usual is to watch this space !