Webinar Special: Romero’s Simon Mabb on how top independent broker is handling covid crisis

Q. What do you think we have and can learn from this lockdown as brokers?

A. I think this is broken into a number of different areas which include: 

• Customers – very early on we were hit with huge volumes of calls asking about cover and looking for advice.  Having a plan in place is key and reviewing that regularly.
• Staff – as the situation broke staff had more and more questions so while dealing with customers you have to field these as well.
• Keeping the wheels turning – you still need to do the day job as well which just got harder.  How do you manage this. 

Q. Developing this further what did you do for your customers?

A. Customers wise we made sure we produced lots of useful information which we published on various channels, set up a Covid 19 telephone support team to deal with general enquiries and trained people from our sales team to manage these queries. 

Then once we were under control we have been managing expectation with customers over potential claims.  The cases we see that have legs we have been communicating with them on a weekly basis as a minimum with updates. 

Q. Developing this further what did you do for your staff?

A. In the early days it was very important people had direction and as important could see we had direction.  Daily update bulletins from the Group MD as the situation developed covering all areas from wfh, well being, customer support, business performance and future strategy helped keep staff informed and motivated. 

When we moved to full lockdown concerns about isolation.  We started more video conferencing internally so people still saw their colleagues.  We started an internal quiz night and moved the staff bulletins to weekly video messages.

Q. Building on the staff well being that is an interesting subject what have you done on this?

A. We already do lots of staff well being having launched an inhouse well being business into the group.  

In the first week all staff had to complete a webinar about working from home then the following weeks we looked at back care and mental health.  These have been very well received as it is important if not more important that we take care of our staff at this time. 

Q. What have been your biggest frustrations in dealing with claims and insurers?

A. I think the biggest frustrations are the speed insurers reacted which was pretty quick declining claims then when we challenged and asked for a final decision letter so we can close these off with customer they are taking weeks to give us this final decision which just slows the process down and frustrates clients without the need