Thursday 1 December 2016

Welcome to Localventure - the resource for IFA introducers on private medical insurance

If you are an IFA, general/commerical broker or Accountant who would like to offer their clients a focused and professional service in all areas of the private medical insurance market then you've just landed in the right place.

I've worked in the PMI sector since 1994 for : WPA, Guardian Health, AXA PPP, BCWA Healthcare, Standard Life Healthcare and now (since 2010) run my own specialist medical insurance practice (regulated via Premier Choice Healthcare - FCA No. 312878).

As I worked for many years as a broker consultant I acquire most of my business from professional introducers and have set up my practice to support introducers and their clients in a focused and transparent way that adds value (both form a product and profitability stand-point) to their business.

As the PMI market becomes more complex and technical more and more professionals feel the need to offer a service in this area to their clients but find it difficult to obtain agencies from PMI insurers or associated sales/technical support and of course with the high level of regulation in the pensions and investments markets it become increasingly difficult for anyone but a specialist like myself to stay ahead of the required product research on things like switch criteria and so on.

If you or your practice is considering sub-contracting medical insurance to a third party you will find hundreds of relevant business articles here at the blog and of course I would be delighted to open a dialogue with you. I currently work with a panel of around 40 introducers across the UK and am always pleased to discuss medical insurance with anyone.

I work in the personal and company paid sectors - mainly high net work individual clients and white collar and start up companies but would never turn away an interested client.

I look forward to working with you in the future.

Phil Knight
Independent Healthcare Consultant
Leeds

December 2016

Get your spelling right on LinkedIn - totoly umportunt (ironic mis-spell)

I lost a small piece of renewal business today to another intermediary (in fact the client companies Finance Director changed and the new gentleman decided to use the broker from his previous job so ultimately I didn't 'lose it' as such). The case is in fact via an IFA introducer of mine who is still working closely with the MD of this client on their pension scheme so we're actually hopeful that we will pick up the case again next renewal.

One learns to play the longer game when you've done this as long as I have.

However I was curious about the new broker so I looked at their LinkedIn page. I'm not going to identify the person obviously but I did have a quiet laugh to myself. The company in question is a regional general insurance broker with a one man healthcare 'Division'.

On LinkedIn, the person in charge of their healthcare 'Division' has a one paragraph overview of their current job role on their LinkedIn profile page. The paragraph starts by saying that this person is :

"highly adapt in brokering" and goes on to say they "posses a strong track record"

Losing a client is an inevitable function of being in my business. A clients needs change over time and sometimes you simply can't follow them where they want to go and certainly one cannot be too down about losing a tiddler of a case, even sometimes against an inferior opponent. Circumstances and relationships rule and no one knows that better than me.

But on the positive side I've had over 3,000 hits on my blog this week with several potential new client referrals as a result - as I say playing the long game is always better.