STRONGER TOGETHER – HELPING BROKERS NAVIGATE THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
2020-06-01 23:00:00.0
At BNP Paribas Personal Finance UK, we’ve been partnering closely with insurance brokers for over 21 years, making it our business to understand their business.
In times of crisis, understanding our clients’ needs is arguably more important than ever, and in recent months our Insurance Premium Finance team’s top priority has been helping their brokers to navigate the coronavirus pandemic, allowing them to concentrate on supporting their customers. We will be remembered for how we have treated our brokers during this crisis.
We sat down with our Head of Insurance Premium Finance Sales, Angie Burgess, to talk about how brokers have been affected by the Covid-19 crisis, and how the IPF team have adapted to meet their changing demands.
Angie says: “We’ve always worked hard to create tailored personal finance solutions for our brokers to offer to their customers, and this unprecedented crisis has emphasised even further the importance of this personalised approach.
“By being responsible and doing the right thing in terms of taking a slightly more flexible approach to debt management, we’ve been able to support our brokers through this challenging time.
“We also noticed early on that because many of our brokers had needed to furlough staff, some of their teams were struggling with a knowledge gap in terms of understanding the finance management software.
“In response to this, we’ve taken steps to help our brokers with system training, providing training sessions for team members who hadn’t used the software before and offering additional support where needed. We have also created new marketing collateral to help brokers increase their offer rate to clients - this has resulted in a significant increase in cash payers switching to using premium finance”
Our IPF team have always maintained strong partnerships with their brokers and were determined to continue providing the best level of customer service, despite not being able to meet them face to face.
Angie explains: “In order to keep communication open and maintain these strong connections with our brokers, we quickly realised that we needed to adapt our ways of working.
“By embracing technology and utilising platforms such as Microsoft Teams, we’ve been getting to know our brokers better than ever before, and this unprecedented challenge has helped us to gain an even deeper understanding of their needs. This approach has also been beneficial in ongoing discussions with new brokers where we have been able to continue with the on-boarding process during lockdown.”
On the wider impact of being part of a global bank, Angie says: “The support from the business as a whole has helped us massively in terms of navigating this transition.
“Having the backing of a global bank has made us feel very secure and supported, and we’ve been able to pass this confidence and reassurance on to our partners.”
At BNP Paribas Personal Finance UK, we believe that we are stronger together, and in unprecedented times like these, this has never been more true.
By encouraging our brokers to share their concerns, and offering some flexibility in our approaching to debt management, we’ve been able to maintain these great relationships in spite of the restrictions we currently face, allowing both our brokers and their customers to maintain ‘business as usual’ as much as possible in this ever-changing world.
To find out more about our insurance premium finance solutions, click here