The Broker Advantage

These days there are many different ways to buy insurance, but there are good reasons to consider using an insurance broker’s expertise to help you make the best-informed decisions.

Insurance brokers act as your personal advisor on insurance matters.  They work for you, not the insurance company, to make sure your family; your possessions and your business are properly protected. If you have the misfortune of a loss your insurance broker will guide you through the claims process, helping to ensure a swift and fair settlement by your insurance company, to get you back to where you were before disaster struck.

 The Advantage: 

  • A broker will advise on the choice of a reputable company.
  • Before effecting the necessary covers, a Broker will negotiate the cheapest rates and most comprehensive covers, which are compatible with security. A Broker is a specialist with a wide experience of the Insurance Market and it is the only one, which can guarantee these types of service.
  • Since you will have to take up many Insurance policies on your Vehicles, Properties, Staff, e.t.c., the Broker will select a convenient common renewal date instead of effecting policies with various dates for all your Insurances, thus, saving you time and money.
  • At renewal, the Broker will undertake a comprehensive survey of the existing covers and then prepare a report. By doing these:-
  • The Broker will make some risk-improvement suggestions, which will invariably reduce the rates of premiums being charged.
  • The schedules of all the assets will be brought up-to-date so that important assets are not over-insured or insure non-existent risks. Any lapse in the revision of the assets can involve an insured in heavy losses when a claim arises.
  • On Motor schedules, every care will be taken to ensure that only road worthy vehicles are insured and classified according to their ages to qualify for being insured comprehensive and third party cover basis. The savings in time and money that a Broker can achieve on this exercise are enormous.
  • Claims processing negotiation settlement required the expertise of a Broker in order to achieve quick results and maximum benefits from an Insurance Company. It is not uncommon to Organisations like yourselves heaping up a lot of claims without knowing what to do to get them settled and these may run into thousands of naira. By appointing a Broker, you would have ridden yourselves of this headache.

In time of acrimonious disagreement and strains in relations, a Broker as the connection rod ensures peace and consequently restores the relations. 

Disadvantages of dealing direct with the Insurance company.

There are many disadvantages in placing Insurance direct with the Insurance Company, some of which are as follows:-

  1. Insurance is a profit-oriented business and this is why the Insurance Company usually frown at whatever that will make them to pay money out. This naturally lead them to imposing difficult obnoxious clauses and conditions which are too technical for any ordinary man in the street to understand.
  1. Proposal Form is the basis of the contract of Insurance and whatever you might have filled in the form may likely work against you during the time of claims because nobody will guide you when you are filling it. The loss you can sustain through this simple Insurance Administration can run into thousands of naira.
  1. The Insurance Company will take the advantage of your ignorance to charge you any rate they consider beneficial to them and through this you can lose a lot of money because there is no expert to guide you.
  1. During the time of claim you will find a lot of difficulties because it is a nerve-wrecking exercise for executives outside the Insurance Industry to match knowledge with a well-trained Insurance Manager. The Insurance Company will take the advantage of the ignorance of the executive outside insurance business to reduce their claim considerably because there will be no Broker who understand the language to negotiate with them. This will also make you to lose money.
  1. If you breach a policy condition innocently, the Insurance Company will hold that to reject your claim outright whereas if you use the services of a broker you will be paid an ex-gratia payment through the professional experience of a Broker.
  1. There will be an imposition of dangerous tags and conditions under your policies so that your claiming against the Insurance Company will be more or less impossible. This again will make the insurance Company not to pay any claim, which they would have paid if you are dealing through a Broker.
  1. During the placement of a risk you will find it difficult to compare rates which are commensurate with the scope of cover you are seeking for without the helps of a Broker.
  1. You will lose touch with the up-to-date and current idea in Insurance Industry if you deal direct with Insurance Company because Brokers would be those to advise you on the day to day affairs of Insurance Industry in Nigeria. The Insurance Company are not always happy to see Brokers handling some Insurance because they know that if there is a claim they will fight on behalf of the insured and get the claim settled at all cost. This invariably means that your Insurance will be well tailored to suit your entire purpose, which you will miss, by dealing with the Insurance Company.

(a)        It is all these that will be placed at your disposal freely for your organization’s advantage. You pay nothing to us as fees as our remuneration is decreed and has to be paid to us directly from the Insurance Company without having any consequential effect on the level of the premium you are paying.

(b)       In view of the foregoing, you will now see both advantages derivable from using the services of an Insurance Broker and disadvantages by dealing with an Insurance Company for we have now given you the opportunity to compare the two situations.