How many brokers and broker firms do you cover in your role?
I cover most of London and Kent, which includes over 1,600 firms. I ensure I am seeing the firms that are doing business with us, or who have the potential to do business with us. One thing I love about my role is that one day I can be driving down the coast in Kent, the next battling the tube to see brokers in Central London.
How do you successfully organise and deal with business on a daily basis?
I like to see 12 to 16 clients a week and it’s also important to save time to return calls and emails. My diary can be booked up quite far in advance, but I also need to be able to rearrange things at short notice when the need arises. Luckily, I work with a great telephone account manager called Jeni Law who helps to look after our brokers and keep me on the straight and narrow.
What issues come up time and time again?
Price against internet comparison sites comes up a lot and brokers often tell me they do not have time to quote on general insurance as they are too busy. My role is to help them understand the importance of the correct levels of protection for their clients and how quick and easy it is to quote on the insurance element and make it part of their mortgage process.
What do you wish brokers understood about your job?
That it’s easy for them to increase their income from our products and how by arranging their clients’ general insurance properly, they can protect their client potfolio and ensure clients remain loyal.
What do you think is the most important attribute in a good BDM?
Adaptability. As a BDM you see and meet lots of different people and differently sized companies. You have to have the ability to get on with anyone – one minute you can be speaking to a sole trader, the next to a director of a large company; you can find yourself presenting to a few people one day and to hundreds the next. The abilities to communicate and be adaptable are crucial in business development.
When you’re unavailable to contact via telephone, what’s the second-best way for brokers to get in touch?
The great thing about Paymentshield is that our team in Southport (including our broker support and our claims team) is available to help advisers and their clients. We have recently doubled our telephone business development team to ensure we are even more available and even more proactive in responding to adviser needs. Of course, if a broker specifically wants to speak to me and leaves me a message I will try to call them back as soon as I can the same day and of course if a conversation isn’t necessary then an email works well too.
If you were head of the FCA for the day, what would you change about regulation in the mortgage industry?
I would make it mandatory for all brokers to quote and advise their clients on general insurance. Comparison sites have promoted the idea that cheap is best, but that’s not the case when it comes to insurance – it’s about understanding the client’s needs and getting the right levels of cover and protection for them.
What was your motivation for choosing business development as a career?
I love getting out and meeting different people. I get to do this while learning about their business and looking at ways we can help them develop, which makes my role even better.
How do you establish and maintain a good relationship with brokers?
The important thing for me at the start is to understand brokers’ businesses – how they work, who are their clients and how can we help them. It’s about getting to know what they want to achieve from general insurance and then working with them to achieve it.
Building a strong relationship with clients is about working as a partnership to help them develop their business. A good chat about anything and everything over a coffee or drink also helps!
And how do you establish and maintain good relationships internally?
I visit our head office on a regular basis and ensure I visit all the departments when I am there. I also speak regularly with different departments on the phone to understand any issues and how we can help each other.
What’s the strangest question you’ve ever been asked?
‘Are you busy?’ In my role I’m either in meetings, presenting to firms, making and returning calls or dealing with emails. That’s the great thing about a business development job, you’re constantly on the go and always have something to do.
And finally, what did you want to be growing up?
An astronaut… I was fascinated by space as a child; I built models of rockets and dreamed of landing on the moon. Obviously, a career in financial services was the next best thing!
