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Finding your dream career can take some time, but it can happen at any stage, as insurance adviser Leecia Burford found out when she was introduced to the career by her sister.
Burford went on to found her own insurance brokerage, Leecia Burford Financial Services, in 2014, and says that while starting her own insurance business isn’t something she ever counted on doing, it has now thoroughly cemented itself as her dream job. However, it is a career that isn’t without its hardships – during her first year, Burford dealt with a number of complicated claims involving tough personal situations, and says her introduction to the sector was a very intense one which put all of her skills to the test.
“To find your dream occupation and be self-employed is quite amazing,” Burford told Insurance Business. “When I look at my own children who are in their 20s, I think – don’t be in a hurry to find your career job, it will come. You’ll find your passion and your right fit, where the reason you get up each morning isn’t just money.”
Burford told us about a claim that she dealt with during her first year on the job, and one that she says thoroughly demonstrates the importance of reviewing your clients’ policies on a regular basis.
“I had a claim come in soon after I started, and it was a client whose cover I had recently reviewed and amended, because he hadn’t been reviewed for many years, she explained.
“He had a 13-week wait on his income protection, and, because it was cheaper, I managed to move him to a four-week wait. One week to the day, I got a text alerting me that he’s in critical. We managed to get his income protection payments started and he was on claim for two years, and he later said to me that if he’d have still had that 13-week wait, he would have lost his house.”
“He’d never even paid a premium, and only started paying it once he came off claim,” she explained. “That was a frightening moment for me, but it was also a moment of understanding why we do what we do as insurance advisers. I managed to get so much experience in my first year, to a level that’s actually almost unheard of!”
Burford recalls visiting that client in hospital, the nurse asking who she was, and being very surprised to learn that she was the client’s insurance adviser. She says that with the ongoing culture shift, this should hopefully start to become the norm rather than the exception.
“The nurse said ‘wow, we don’t see many of those here!’” Burford said. “But they should. That’s our job, we need to get that signature so that the client can get paid. That’s the part I really love around my occupation. It’s not just about premiums, it’s actually about dealing with real situations involving real people.”
“I also dealt with several deaths in that same year,” she added. “Someone asked me, ‘How do you handle that?’ And my response is – I know that the money has made a difference. It hasn’t changed anything, but it has helped.”
