A new digital employee benefits broker has launched targeting the small business market.
Hooray Health & Protection claims to offer more cost-effective ways for SMEs to buy group risk and health insurance, by offering financial reviews by WebEx and telephone, rather than via a face-to-face review.
Director Charlie Cousins, who set up the firm, previously worked for one of the larger insurers operating in the employee benefits sector. He says the industry has to date failed to offer services to meet the needs of smaller businesses.
Cousins points out that at the start of 2019 there were just 49,820 group life policies and 17,304 group income protection schemes in force in the UK — despite there being 1.3m businesses in the UK.
Cousins says: “This signals a serious problem in the industry where brokers are not keeping up with today’s SMEs and their needs.”
He adds: “The majority of business owners we talk to would prefer to speak with a protection expert straight away and save the cost of paying for financial advisers travel costs and expenses.”
Embracing technology solutions in the group risk market will help expand this market and close the protection gap, he says.
