Inertia extends to corporate health and protection housekeeping

Helping employers to plan ahead with clarity and confidence

Compared car insurance yet? Asked for a quote on what it costs to cover your home? C’mon, time’s nearly up on both.

And there’s always your bank account. Given the regulatory action to make it simpler to switch, have you considered it after what may be years or even decades with the same institution?

While those of us in health and protection consulting are, by nature, plan-ahead people, that’s by no means everyone.

For many, the prospect of dusting off an insurance certificate or reviewing the terms for stone-chip damage, let alone overdraft interest rates, is something which will only happen when it absolutely, definitely has to. That is, when you’ve exhausted every possible distraction amid an epic bout of procrastination.

Even when the alternative is clearly better value and more in line with the kind of cover you need, it takes an almighty effort to get it done.

So if some people vacillate and procrastinate at home, guess what? The same happens in the corporate health and protection market too. Insurance in all its forms is, after all, designed with the vagaries of human activity in mind. Putting something off, while completely natural for a number of us, isn’t always the best way to protect your business and people from any unwelcome future episodes.

While we’re not the folk to be holding your feet to the fire, demanding you read the small print, we can offer more constructive ways of shaping cover to suit your business. Once cover is in place, we can then provide further support through drafting employee benefits communications for your employees.

If you’re setting the direction for your company and your employees, we can help the navigation effort to design the health and protection policies to suit this strategic direction and, most importantly, to refine what you need for what might lie ahead.

One way we do this is in our interaction with the insurance underwriters who ultimately dictate the price paid for cover. Although the industry uses standardised measurements, we’re able to bring our knowledge and experience to bear to fashion a much clearer outline of the scale and nature of the risk they are taking on. On this point, our involvement can mean more keenly priced premiums.

An upcoming post will be an example of doing just that for a client, one which was able to swiftly see the difference we were able to make to the level of health and protection cover and what it cost when they wanted to make a change. The savings we made for them were substantial.

We think one part of the inertia puzzle is that clients may struggle to identify what improvements can be made to their current situation. Our background means we can offer a clear picture to protect against risk - including that posed by hesitating on what we all know we should be doing, planning ahead with clarity and confidence.