Winding down for Easter - NOT

This year Easter falls early at the end of March and as such is a funny one, usually for schools for example the two Bank holidays : Good Friday and Easter Monday form part of the actual two week Easter break. For Leeds City Council run schools though some schools are splitting the break - taking the two 'actual' holidays of Easter then going back on Tuesday the 29th before breaking up again the following week for a fortnight. Some are taking the end of term from the Thursday before Good Fiday for two weeks. For those of us with kids in schools doing one of each it is an extra long and complex break to manage.

Point is though that around the country Easter could be a long break this year with lots of people off work at odd times.

I mention this because holiday times, especially those with Bank Holidays tend to be quieter work-wise simply because there are fewer clients and introducers at work as many with kids have to take time off.

For me Easter, the end of July and Christmas are the three quieter times of the year. As a general principle I take these lulls in activity as an opportunity to up my marketing and social media work to ensure that May and June are busier to make up for the quieter time in April.

For IFA's and other professional introducers I'd suggest a word of caution around private medical insurance (PMI) at this time of year too. Firstly I know many will be busy with tax year end and so on. It is however worth noting that a lot of small group and high net worth individual clients personal PMI plans will tend to renew at this time of year. There is therefore a danger with ignoring PMI in late March through April in so far as although it might seem there isn't much happening but there are clients out there that are simply auto-renewing their plans without input because clients are away on holiday, off work with kids and of course because the professional introducers are tied up with Spring Budgets, tax year end and so forth.

Many of these clients won't have had proper reviews in years because of when their broker or direct sales person set up their plans and if they are on legacy plans which have not been regularly looked at then they are almost certainly paying too much for inferior cover - we can help them but we need to take action !

With that in mind my marketing campaign for the next month will be aimed at highlighting some of the PMI opportunities that are out there and trying to rise them with my current and prospective introducers - if you get a call or an e-mail from me it might be worth thinking about getting back to me so neither of us miss out on clients to help and income to generate !