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Don’t be put off selling insurance add-ons – whether gadget, motor-related, LEI, home emergency or other connected insurance contracts. When fairly priced and appropriately sold, insurance add-ons can be beneficial for your customers and profitable for your business.

We’ve recently been approached by a number of firms concerned about FCA scrutiny of add-ons – particularly in the light of the Carphone Warehouse fine. In our experience, add-ons can be sold fairly and compliantly so if you want to know how to avoid the common pitfalls, or you feel your add-on sales process needs a review, ask us.

The Five Key Stages

At Thistle we have plenty of expertise in helping general insurance brokers and distributors to sell add-ons compliantly; in our experience there are five key stages:

1. Developing and pricing your add-on product – understanding and articulating the benefits for customers and your business, bench marking pricing and recording the rationale behind this.
2. Identifying your target market and understanding the issues – ensuring that the product offers the right benefits to the right market, identifying the customer’s needs and determining how the product meets these.
3. Creating a clear, compliant sales process – as well as understanding the detailed requirements of ICOBS such as disclosure and demands and needs, this includes ensuring that customers’ best interests are fully incorporated into the customer journey.
4. Training your staff to sell compliantly – providing robust training with scenarios and examples, backed by clear scripts and written processes so staff understand not just the what but also the why.
5. Gathering and analysing MI to support your controls and make sure you stay on track – identifying MI that will really allow you to monitor how well your processes and controls are working and reviewing this at the right level on a regular basis.

Selling add-ons compliantly can provide a benefit for your customers and a useful source of revenue for your business. It can help to support customer retention and evidence the value you bring to relationships with your clients.

But it can be a risk. Get it wrong and you could find your business subject to regulatory censure, disciplinary action, fines and customer compensation. Of course, that’s a worse case scenario and one which, with the right support, you won’t have to worry about.

How can Thistle help you?
If you are new to the market, Thistle will help you develop a compliant sales process and support you every step of the way. If you are already selling add-ons we can review your existing processes and approach and make recommendations if we think controls need strengthening.

We will give you advice and guidance on the product and the market. We will provide hands-on practical support to develop compliant written processes and scripts, provide training and create file review templates. We can identify relevant MI and work with you to create a monitoring process. We can also undertake file and/or call recording reviews on your behalf for robust, independent oversight.

Before you make any decisions about joining, staying or leaving the add-on sales sector, call us and talk through your concerns with our expert team. Speaking to Thistle might be just the help you need.

Contact us today on enquiries@thistleinitiatives.co.uk or call 01925 767503.

Visit our insurance page for more information on our services.