More than insurance advice

Maybe take the exclusion, maybe take the loading. Conspicuous by its absence is the option, “Uh, wow, I never thought it was that dangerous. I’ll stop. Sell the bike. That’s me done.” The option of giving up the racing is rarely on the table.

Imagine, perhaps, other life changing moments, all brought about by the presentation of the offer of terms: “Really, just for having a BMI of 55? Okay, I’m going to change. I’m not even going to finish this pastry”. Claims sometimes have that effect, but the premium alone - rarely. For better or for worse, we assume, mostly, that our clients have chosen their lives and current circumstances: rich or poor, fat or thin, sick or well. After all, if lugging around all those extra kilograms didn’t convince them, why would a few extra dollars on the premium?

That’s the view if the role you defined for yourself was just ‘insurance adviser’. Partly because of the separation of insurance product from investments in the 1990s, and partly because of the regulatory split between RFAs and AFAs since then, that has been the default approach for many for some time. If you see yourself offering only insurance advice, then talk about risk management is superfluous. The role is about education, arguing for budget, setting cover levels, identifying the right contracts, comparing, selecting options and reviewing the cover while in-force. These are all really valuable tasks. Good insurance advice is good to have.

But there are some advisers that define it differently.