Your IndustryJan 27 2016

Time is of the essence

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I do my best to refer individual clients back to any adviser who refers work to me. It works well; I will advise the company and provide information to the employees and he will provide advice to those employees who want it. I present jointly with the adviser to the employees and ensure that he is seen as the expert to contact for individual advice, which is something I do not provide. I have a call scheduled in the afternoon with one of the pension providers to an existing client regarding their retirement offering and potential new joiners from a defined benefit scheme that will be closing to future accrual. I will be conducting a market review to ensure that the trustees can obtain suitable and competitive terms for these new members.

Tuesday

Market review time for many group life and income protection and private medical insurance plans. Most of my clients have renewal dates between February and April, so I have spent some time preparing a list of which plans are going to the market and knowing who is still in their rate guarantee period and will renew. Insurers are bombarded during February and April and turnaround times for those who manually price their schemes can increase. It is important to get specifications and member details to them as early as possible as sometimes mistakes in the quotations provided by the insurers need to be corrected.

Wednesday

I have two presentations to two different companies’ employees today. The companies have had pension schemes set up by their accountants and they have asked for presentations to their employees to let them know what is happening. So no advice from me as I will just be explaining how everything works. I will be delivering the presentations at the company’s offices and there will be some driving between the two firms as they are not that close together.

Thursday

Although based in Derbyshire, I used to live in London and I have many contacts and clients there. My train is booked and I have three different companies to meet with today. The first will be a discussion with employees at a merchant bank to gain feedback on what they would like from their new company pension, then a review meeting with an existing client followed by a presentation to some of their new employees. Then it is an installation meeting for a new client who is setting up a group personal pension (GPP) and a group life scheme.

Friday

I have a meeting planned with an accountant somewhere near the middle of the M1. We will be discussing two clients of his with auto-enrolment staging dates of March and June this year. The accountant has just been appointed. All payroll functions have been outsourced to them and they need help with the unresponsive insurance company. There is an existing GPP in place and I know the insurance company’s offering well, but time is of the essence here.

At last it is the weekend, and I am looking forward to taking my children to swimming and mini rugby.

William Annison is a director at Derbyshire-based HWWA Consulting