Together husband and wife duo Ryan and Tara Nel have insurance and mortgage broking covered with their two businesses – The Insurance Pad and the Lending Pad.
The Insurance Pad is the newest of the two, having launched in May to primarily help Lending Pad customers with their insurance needs. The businesses recently moved from Auckland’s Parnell to Grey Lynn.
One thing that Tara Nel, a former financial planner, believes is that while there are great insurance advisers working in the industry, there are also advisers who either push or oversell customers on products they don’t need.
“I think when people don’t understand something, there is a naivety that makes them vulnerable and then they can end up having things (cover) they think is fit for purpose and they’re not always,” said Nel. “When I established the Insurance Pad, what I really wanted was to have people in the business who were incredibly customer focused and who were all about giving advice, and absolutely want to do well - but their fundamental focus is doing right by the customer.
“Everything about our process is fully understanding the customer properly and making sure we go away and do analysis and research and come back and make recommendations of what we think people should do. If people then decide they don’t want to, that’s fine, that’s their prerogative but at least they know what we’re suggesting is a really good risk management plan for them. And they have the information and can make their own decisions.”
Nel and her insurance brokers use QuoteMonster, a tool she rates very highly, to get a sense of who’s got the best products out there for a specific customer and why.
“It’s impossible to understand every single insurance company’s products, and terms and conditions – so that’s a really effective tool that we use and that I rate really highly,” she explained. “We’ve aligned with really good insurance companies that provide great service to customers, which is really important to us. It’s not just about the service we provide but we want to make sure we’re aligned, and that we align them (the client) with a company that’s going to take care of them.
“At the Insurance Pad, we advise on what we’re told through research is the best product and most suitable for the client. We give business to a wide range of insurance companies - we’re highly unlikely to be any of the insurance companies’ superstars because we’re going to be solid in all of them. We’re not giving our business to one company.”
Nel said transparency is really important for customer choice and decision making, and gives them facts to work with instead of “just relying on the word of the person sitting in front of them.”
“In the industry, there is a lot if churning, and what I’m really pleased about is that the industry is trying to take a much harder line on that,” she said. “Every insurance broker has to complete an advice replacement form to prove why they’re moving from one company to another. That independent research enables you to say, ‘well actually this is why,’ and justify why it’s better - and if you can’t then you shouldn’t be moving it.”
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