This is the sixth in our series on building excellent insurance financial reports using Quotemonster and Quality Product Research.
We believe in great financial advice. For financial advice to be good we must be solving a problem or meeting a need that a client has. One of the best financial advisers in the world recently said that a really powerful question to ask a client is ‘what do you want?’ When advisers don’t ask it we can run into all sorts of trouble – making assumptions about what a client wants can lead to giving poor advice. But sometimes the client simply does not know what they want and in order to answer the question they need to choose between some options. That can help get the conversation going.
Documenting what the client wants is also a crucial part of meeting your compliance obligations as an adviser – as you can only prove that your advice is good for the client if you have agreed a goal with the client. So that’s why our needs analysis tool starts by asking some questions to help you define the scope.
To start a needs analysis, you need to enter some client details as if you were about to do a quote. Once you have completed this first page of information click next. Instead of choosing some benefits and sums insured move the mouse to the top of the screen and click the ‘needs crunching’ button.
There are four steps to completing the needs analysis and using the results to create a quote – this message is all about the first step – scope and priorities. The main types of personal insurance are listed, with an explanation to help clients that may not understand clearly what they are. Then there are some typical limitations and exclusions shown to help clients understand what won’t be covered. Then you ask your client to choose a priority for each type of cover.
This helps focus your solution on what the client most wants. Priorities will help a lot later when you decide to reduce some cover in order to meet the client’s budget. Recording it quickly here can help out in the event of any disagreement at claim time – did the client really believe they were covered for income protection? Not if they decided to make income protection ‘less important’ and remove the cover due to budget considerations. Capturing that information here takes just seconds, contributes to a thorough job, and can help you meet your compliance obligations.
This page can also help you sell more by introducing your client to a wider range of insurance benefits – particularly the ‘living’ benefits of medical, income protection, and trauma cover.
The lower part of the page deals with the services you will not be providing. This makes it clear to the client that you will either refer them to another adviser for further help or that you have a hard limit on what you do: perhaps you do not provide advice on KiwiSaver, or you need to make it clear that you do not review home, car, and contents insurance. It is recorded simply here.
The next part in the series looks at defining the work you agree to do for your client. It is a real showcase for what you can do with full personalised advice.