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The Wrap

How to charge for life insurance advice

Life insurance is such an important part of securing a client’s financial future. Here are some ideas on how to provide profitable, fee for service life insurance advice and a winning process.

Charging for life insurance advice

The key is to make your process compelling, valuable and efficient. Sure, it is important to explain the technical stuff – trauma definitions, funding levels etc. But your client must first understand the bigger picture.

In a fee for service model, the goal is not to simply sell your client a product. It is to provide advice for which a client is willing to pay. A client will pay where the perceived value of the advice exceeds the cost.

And let’s face it. Life insurance is hardly the most exciting topic for a client. However, one way to better engage and demonstrate value to your clients is to focus on their ‘bigger picture’.

Break the process into distinct steps, with each step focussing on the client’s goals and aspirations.

Estimate how long each step in the process is likely to take and calculate the value of your time. This will be a useful proxy for pricing your advice, but not necessarily the sole factor.

Step 1: Discovery

The first step is discovery. Apart from collecting the necessary financial information, you focus on getting the client to articulate their lifestyle goals. What is important to them? Are they saving for a home? Do they wish to send their children to a private school or retire on a comfortable income?

These are things that matter most to clients. And it is important that these are properly identified from the outset.

Step 2: Strategy

Conduct a thorough analysis of your client’s cash flow position. Demonstrate how they can spend and invest wisely to fund a fulfilling lifestyle, ideally using an interactive cash flow modelling tool. After all, the greatest asset is their income. And that income holds the key to their lifestyle.

Now, what would happen if that income was lost? By demonstrating the lifestyle their income could otherwise fund, clients will better understand its value and the importance of protecting it. It becomes a no brainer.

Step 3: Product

Calculate how much cover is required to protect their lifestyle and then find products to meet those needs.

If you chose to rebate the commission, show your client the present value of that saving which is likely to be substantial over time.

Step 4: Implementation

Implementation of the advice is a valuable process. Does a client have time to follow up with underwriters and lodge extensive paperwork? It could be priced separately as an additional step.

Step 5: Ongoing review

Finally, providing bigger picture advice should help you to position the value of your ongoing services. You are there to help your clients stay on track and to revise their strategy as changes occur.

Tools to help you provide fee for service life insurance advice

 

Here is a suggested process on how you can build a seamless, efficient and profitable fee for service life insurance advice process:

1 Pre-meeting

Use the Plutosoft Client Portal to capture key information about your client before the discovery meeting.

2 Discovery meeting

identify your client’s bigger picture goals and confirm financial position. Generate:

a) Your Terms of Engagement

b) the Plutosoft Reverse Fact Find Report

3 Pre-strategy meeting 

Use the Plutosoft Modelling Tool to analyse cash flow and strategies that help achieve your client’s goals.

4 Strategy meeting 

Present your modelling interactively on-screen. Let your client provide their own feedback and model it with them. Generate:

a) an instant Needs Analysis

b) a strategy paper showing the benefits and implications of the strategy (or multiple alternatives).

5 SoA Presentation 

Generate and present your SoA. Generate and sign the compliance documents, including the Authority to Proceed and move to implementation.