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Victorian brokers did us all proud
Insurance & Risk Professional, April 2009 Sometimes brokers are forced by circumstance to work well beyond what would normally be expected of them. No one asks them to; they just step into the breach because their expertise is needed. That was the case in the weeks following the Victorian bushfires. Brokers in the areas around the bushfire made their services available to total strangers whose lives had been turned upside-down. They took on additional responsibilities to help people sort through their insurance claims. At the same time they were working long hours looking after the interests of their established clients. For some brokers, the experience was particularly difficult. Clients they had known for years were among the dead and the injured. Some brokers knew whole families who were counted among the lost. Yet all rallied to NIBA’s call for member brokers to attend to the insurance needs of all – client or not. Not one broker contacted me to say it was a bad idea, or that they were already being buried by the needs of their own clients. Our congratulations are extended to our Victorian colleagues who worked so selflessly to assist the bushfire victims. There are many lessons to learn from a tragedy of such scale, and NIBA was encouraged at the willingness of Victorian Premier John Brumby to put aside political considerations and call a royal commission with a very open brief to examine all aspects of the bushfires tragedy. Something that will come in for close scrutiny is the fact that so many people in the devastated areas had no insurance at all. Somehow as many as 30% of the affected people, living in an area so susceptible to bushfire, had decided insurance wasn’t necessary or that they couldn’t afford it. Taxes on insurance in Victoria can, in some cases, virtually equal the premium. There is also the issue of the fire services levy, an insurance tax that allows the uninsured to avoid paying a cent for the upkeep of the fire services that battled so valiantly to save their properties. NIBA found itself in a difficult situation after the bushfires. Members will be all too aware that we have campaigned for years to gain the community’s support to influence Victoria and New South Wales, in particular, to change their policies towards insurance taxes. When the bushfires struck we were in the final stages of preparing a “white paper” designed to show people how taxes impact on insurance and their ability to take out proper levels of cover. We planned to distribute these documents to members’ clients, as well as to community leaders and the media. Instead we delayed. To have capitalised on the situation may well have exposed NIBA to media criticism that we were taking advantage of the situation. Now we are ready, and this month hundreds of thousands of people will receive the paper. In an environment where people are thinking about the causes of underinsurance and non-insurance for the first time, we hope it will be prove a catalyst for change. If people just learn about insurance taxes, we will have progressed a long way along the road to change. Our pride in the contribution Victorian brokers made to the recovery operation after the bushfires also brings into closer focus the value of broking. Over the past year NIBA has also been investigating the feasibility of a television advertising campaign that promotes broking. We have been inspired by the success of a long-running TV campaign in Canada, and hope that we too can promote the role of the broker as a cornerstone of the insurance-buying process. We’ll be showing the “roughs” of the campaign to members during our annual Sundowners tour of the country. So come along to the sessions, meet NIBA President Steve Lardner and see what we’re doing to enhance the role of the broker. Even as we’re getting all these programs together we’re also putting together the final preparations for the NIBA Convention in Sydney in September. We’re working to make this an all-embracing event, where all sectors of the insurance industry can come together and discuss the business, its issues and its future. The Convention is an important part of the fabric that makes up the insurance broking sector, and I think that this year it will be very useful for all participants as a networking and learning event. We’ll have much to celebrate. The bushfires have reminded us just how important brokers are when it comes to the protection of our property and our livelihoods. Pride in the service brokers have provided to the community following the bushfires is tempered with sadness that such a horrific disaster may have been the thing that finally forced governments to see that affordable insurance should be a basic right. In a year when the world seems to be incapable of pulling up from a deepening financial crisis, it’s obvious we’re going to have a lot to talk about in the months ahead. |
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