insurance Archives

My Top 3 Tips For When You Buy Insurance Online

Posted on November 14, 2018December 10, 2020 by Alleviate

You need insurance for many of the good things in life – travelling, running a business, buying your home, etc. These are all important things to protect from hazards, however no one teaches you how to buy the insurance to give you that protection. Especially not many of the insurers selling it.

When most of us – I’m including both consumers and businesses here – go to buy something, we look online for what we think is a good deal. We’re blissfully ignorant that taking this route can leave you high and dry if you need to make a claim. Even if you’re usually pretty switched on, you don’t know what you don’t know (we’ll get into that later).

So, if you’re thinking about buying insurance online but are worried about wasting thousands on a policy that won’t come through, this is an article for you.

Based on my 13 years as an insurance broker, these are the top three common mistakes people make when buying insurance online.

1. Putting The Wrong Business Name on the Application

Getting your name right on a form seems like primary school stuff, but people get it wrong on their insurance forms more than you can imagine. While a fat-fingered typo won’t necessarily be a deal-breaker, forgetting to add the correct business identifier or writing in something altogether different from your business name could be.

I’ve seen countless businesses that might have come undone because:

They’ve registered under the parent company’s name, but are trading under a different business name.
They’ve changed their business name, but the old name is still listed on their policy.
The name of the business they’re trading under is incorrectly listed in their policy documents, and actually describes another company with a similar name.

When scenarios like these come up, the result is usually a lively discussion between the policyholder, the insurer and sometimes the ombudsman about the purchaser’s “intent”.

If you bought the policy in good faith but under a technically “wrong” business name, you may still be able to claim, but is that an argument you want to have after you’ve just suffered a significant loss?

If you’ve used one business name instead of another because the business you’re actually trading under has a dubious past, the insurer will most likely not view that as good faith – more like deliberate non-disclosure. It’s very likely you can say goodbye to your claim, your cover and all the premiums you’ve been paying out!

What’s the easiest way to avoid this situation? Get advice someone you can trust!

2. Thinking Near Enough Is Good Enough When Listing Your Occupation

Drop-down menus catch a lot of businesses out when they’re applying for the regular forms of insurance, such as business insurance, public liability or professional indemnity.

Here’s how it happens:

The site asks you to choose your occupation from a drop-down menu.
Your exact business type is not listed, but there is one that seems close enough.
You pick that one.
You click “Buy”.
Congratulations, you just bought an insurance policy covering work you don’t do!

Case in point: I recently worked with a hi-tech cleaning company that microbially purifies business premises top to bottom. The business thought it was doing the right thing when buying insurance through a comparison website. Later, when the owner came to me to review the policy, I saw the business was categorised as carpet cleaning.

The business hygiene provider had already been operating for months. If an incident had occurred regarding any operations not related to carpet cleaning, then they wouldn’t have had any cover at all! Like any innovator, this business didn’t fit neatly into any of the standard menu options. We soon got their insurance sorted out through working directly with the insurer.

If you’re not sure if you’ve listed your occupation correctly, don’t be an ostrich. Pull your head out of the sand. Pick up the phone and ask your insurer to specifically note your occupational duties on the policy. If they won’t, there’s probably a good reason: they don’t cover those activities. Find an insurer who will or find someone who can help you get it right.

3. Relying On Comparison Websites For All Your Research

Comparing policies online might feel like due diligence, but comparison websites aren’t actually there to give you great protection; they’re designed to make money from referrals.

Here’s why comparison websites rarely offer business owners the best value:

They offer one-size-fits-all policies: Your business is (or should be) different from every other company in your industry. Your insurance has to reflect that. Comparison sites don’t give much opportunity to tailor a policy to your unique risk profile. This means most people who buy online either end up underinsured (i.e. with spotty coverage) or overinsured (i.e. paying excessive premiums).
The pool of insurers they draw from is tiny: As insurance brokers, we can access about 140 different insurers and thousands of policy wordings. As a consumer on a comparison website, you can only choose from maybe 6 to 10 different options. Plus, you have no way of knowing how the insurer you select responds to claims. We, on the other hand, know which insurers have a reputation for wriggling out of paying and which ones are known for behaving themselves when claims come up.
The devil is in the detail: It’s not always easy to know what you’re signing up for. Just like I have good knowledge about contracts but always get a lawyer to review mine, it’s always a good idea to get an insurance broker to review your policy before you sign it. At the very least, make sure you know the definitions, understand the policy limitations and are across the sub-limits.

A Simplistic Solution Usually Causes More Problems Later On

There is a big difference between simple and simplistic:

Something made simple still works properly
Something made simplistic doesn’t.

Buying business insurance can be a simple process if you have the right advice. But buying business insurance online is usually a simplistic process because you don’t have the right advice. You will pay good money for a piece of paper that says “policy”, but how much faith can you put in it?

Did you just bet your entire business on a policy you bought from a “Meerkat” after 10 minutes of clicking drop-down boxes with options that seemed close enough?

An online comparison site might be completely fine if you have a mainstream kind of business. However, if your business is an innovator or a little left-field – like the corporate hygienist in the example – you’re going to find plenty of things the comparison sites can’t do.

So, get your existing policy out or download all the details on the one you’re thinking of buying. If there is anything you don’t understand, that’s your trigger to call someone you trust to get an explanation.

My advice is that diving in and buying insurance without a good level of understanding is a not a good business risk to take.

The way I see it, your edge in business comes from controlling and consciously engaging with certain ‘good risks’ on an ongoing basis. It’s why I always say Risk-Reward-Repeat. The other side of this is that your business insurance is there to mitigate the bad risks.

So, don’t make buying your insurance a bad risk in the first place.

Business Insurance 101: The Fundamental Concepts

Posted on July 29, 2018January 12, 2021 by Alleviate

This article is for people who don’t understand business insurance, but need to. This usually means you’re in business yourself. And, if you’re in business already, then you probably already have the main thing you need to make enough sense of the whole topic of business insurance: instincts. There are two major business instincts relevant here:

Business Instinct A: Am I getting a fair deal?
Business Instinct B: Do I know enough to know if I’m getting a fair deal?

In this article, I’m going to cover the basics of business insurance so that when you’re ready to get cover, you’ll have your bearings and know the right questions to ask. I’m going to fill you in on a bit of B so you have a sharper instinct A.

What is insurance?

In short, insurance is a promise (contract) between you and your insurer wherein you both agree that if an “insurable event” happens to you in the next 365 days and you’ve paid your premiums (a fixed cost outlined in your contract), the insurer will pay you a certain amount of money to cover your losses.

However, as you might have guessed, not all promises are alike. The types of events that you can be insured against, the amount of money you have to pay your insurer every billing period, and what you can claim if the worst happens will all vary according to which insurer, policy and type of insurance you take out.

No insurance policy will ever cover every risk associated with running a business. Not only is it impossible to plan for every single thing that might happen to your company, but even if an insurer could do that their premiums would be through the roof.

This is where prudent advice and good risk management come into play. A good insurance broker will study and understand your business. Once they have a good grasp on your revenue streams, they’ll be able to explain in depth:

the cover you have
the cover you need
the cover you can probably do without.

Most importantly they will be able to tell which of your risks are uninsurable.

Then, if they’re qualified or educated to do so through some form of academic qualifications in risk management, they’ll also guide you through setting up procedures in your business to try to alleviate some of the unknowns to help keep your insurance premiums reasonable and sustainable.

How insurers decide the value of a policy

Insurance companies rely on specialists called actuaries to calculate the risks in a specific occupation or industry.

Actuaries study every single detail of a business operation and then use algorithmic models to calculate insurance premiums. For example, an actuary at a sawmill will consider many factors including (but by no means limited to):

Geographic business location
Type of timber
Age of equipment
Staff training
Construction of the business facility
Nearby emergency services support
Local environment
Historical industry data on prior claims.

Once they have these and hundreds more data points, the actuary gets number crunching. From their findings, they then advise the insurers as to what the risk profile of the operation is. Using this information, the insurer can work out what a profitable yet fair insurance premium would look like and what their policy will and will not cover.

The 7 types of insurance your business might need

Many businesses underestimate how much risk they’re exposed to every day. While most business people are aware that their company could be affected by a fire, burglary, flooding, equipment breakdowns or some kind of accident, they don’t realise that there are many other very real threats they should insure against. Let’s look at a few:

Professional liability insurance: If you’re a professional, chances are that a mistake you make could cause one of your clients financial loss – and those are the type of mistakes that preface lawsuits. This insurance isn’t just for doctors or lawyers, however. Even a marketing professional who is responsible for a brand’s image should consider taking out professional liability insurance. If you’re good at what you do, chances of a claim is unlikely. The problem is that it’s usually the legal defence costs that result in a higher expense that the actual financial loss itself.
Product liability insurance: What would you do if a product you manufacture causes property damage, injures or even kills a consumer? If you have product liability insurance, you can rest assured knowing that a personal injury or property damage lawsuit won’t destroy your business. A common misunderstanding in product-type exposures are your obligations under Australian law. In short, if you import anything for ‘resale’ under our legislation, you are deemed to be the ‘manufacturer’ of that product.
Public liability insurance: Does your business interact with the public? If so, you need to know that in the event that someone is injured or their property is damaged while you’re providing your services, you could be liable to cover their losses. Public liability insurance is designed to protect you from this.
Property insurance: Anyone whose business is located within a specific physical premises needs property insurance. This type of insurance is designed to ensure that both the building you operate out of and the equipment and inventory within it are covered in the event of a fire, flood or break-in.
WorkCover: Every Queensland business that employs workers is legally obligated to insure against workplace accidents with a WorkCover policy. Other jurisdictions have similar regulations.
Business interruption insurance: How long could your business survive an unexpected interruption to trade? One week? One month? One year? This type of insurance can help contribute to your cash flow if you experience a loss of revenue, a loss of name and good fame, or some other event that interrupts trade.
Car insurance: Taking out a policy for your work vehicles is a no-brainer. You insure your family car, so why wouldn’t you do the same for your business cars?

How business insurance differs from personal insurance

First up: personal insurance policies are a lot simpler than business policies. While people who don’t own businesses simply need to insure tangible assets like their income and property, business owners must insure both tangible and intangible assets (such as loss of trade).

For example, consider the many questions that must be asked when a loss of trade claim is being evaluated:

Who/what is responsible for the loss of trade?
Has the business also suffered a loss of reputation?
Are there measurable lost opportunities?
Is the business’s revenue straightforward and easy to average, or do recent records include windfalls?
Will purchases need to be made to restore the business to its former earning capacity?
How much revenue will be lost until those purchases are made?
How do each of these factors affect the other factors?

The more business insurance research you do, the more you realise how irreducibly complex your business is! There are so many different cogs in the machine, and they must all work together for you to make a safely insurable profit.

If your livelihood hinges upon your business working smoothly every day, I cannot overstate how important it is that you have a backup plan for if/when one of these cogs conks out!

5 tips for making your business more insurable

When it comes to buying insurance for your business, there are steps you can take to get access to more cheaper premiums. If you want the most competitive offers on the market, it’s a good idea to:

Mitigate risks: Have policies and procedures (safety training, risk management reviews, etc.) in place that reduce the likelihood of an incident happening in the first place. This is often the best and cheapest form of ‘insurance’ possible.
Improve security around your business: Installing alarms, cameras, sprinklers, digital security protocols and other security products may be a significant short-term cost to your business, but this can help you save a lot on your premiums over the long term.
Bundle your insurance: If you own multiple businesses, you may be able to get a better deal by insuring them all under one company. Just make sure that each policy provides adequate, tailored coverage for its corresponding business.
Pay in advance: As with health and vehicle insurance, you’ll pay more if you opt to pay monthly. If you can, pay your premiums for the whole year in one go.
Use a broker: Cheap insurance isn’t always good insurance, so unless you enjoy reading fine print and studying industry jargon, it’s a good idea to find an independent broker who will do the research and bargaining for you.

How you can invalidate your business insurance policy

When you take out a standard business insurance policy, you can rightfully then expect to be provided with 12 months of cover. There are, however, certain circumstances that can invalidate your insurance policy. These include:

Failure to pay premiums: If you miss a payment you may not be covered until you’re caught up again.
Deception (deliberate or accidental): If you make a false statement (whether deliberately or accidentally) about one or more aspects of your business during your application process, not only will this deception affect whether your future claims will be paid out, you may also find yourself in trouble with the law! You must always be honest with your insurer and disclose all relevant information. The rule of thumb here: if you’re not sure, get advice.
Illegal activities: In the event your business incurs a loss because of your criminal behaviour, don’t expect your insurer to pick up the slack.

In addition to these definite deal-breakers, most policies will include other exclusions. It’s important to understand what your policy will and won’t cover.

Don’t be afraid to ask your insurance broker or the insurer themselves very specific ‘what if’ questions. It’s better to pay a little bit more for the cover you need than to be paying low premiums for a policy that won’t help you out when you really need it!

Business insurance 101

So there you have it, the basics of business insurance. We have looked at what insurance really is and touched on how insurers go about offering it.

You now have a grounding in the basic types of business insurance and how the field differs from personal insurance. And last, we touched on ways you can make your business more insurable … plus a few things you can do to make it much, much less insurable.

All that lot should be enough to satisfy Business Instinct B (knowing enough to make the next step) as mentioned back in the introduction. So, what is the next step that’s going to start exercising Business Instinct A? Find an insurer or insurance broker to apply all the concepts we have talked about to your specific situation.

Get the risks right, and you’ll be able to safely repeat them … and reap the rewards. Want to know more about how business insurance is a crucial gateway to growth? Drop me a line: morgan.appleby@alleviate.insure

6 fundamental insurance questions small business owners are too polite to ask

Posted on June 29, 2018January 12, 2021 by Alleviate

Most first-time business owners are only vaguely aware their fledgling company needs insurance. And 30 seconds after the idea pops into their head, they push it right back out and decide to just hope for the best.

This is not a good strategy – actually, it’s not even a strategy. The reality is that any business owner who doesn’t want their cash flow or operating viability destroyed if a certain incident or circumstance occur needs insurance.

No one wants to look uneducated, but don’t let fear of asking a stupid question (or fear that all insurance professionals are shonky and won’t give you honest, unbiased information) stop you from understanding what business insurance is all about.

Instead, equip yourself with the knowledge you need to make informed decisions – whatever they may be!

Read time: 7 minutes.

1. Is insurance just a rip-off?

As an insurance broker, of course my answer to this question is a resounding NO. My reasons might surprise you though. In my eyes, business insurance is valuable for three key reasons:

Running a business is stressful, and insurance buys you the peace of mind that comes with knowing your operations are no longer vulnerable to certain kinds of events. You keep paying your premium and if things go down a bit or an unexpected event that would otherwise wipe you out suddenly occurs, you know you’re going to be okay. It’s a pretty simple equation: insurance = less risk = less stress. Something every business owner wants!
Getting the right business insurance forces you to spend time weighing up the unique risks and rewards for your market and operations. This type of in-depth evaluation, being half of the classic SWOT analysis, naturally reveals opportunities that your competitors are overlooking.
Lenders and big clients can more comfortably invest in you when they know you have insurance backup. When your business is insured, investors are more willing to back you, banks can offer you better lending opportunities and you’re able to make the bold moves that propel your business forward, instead of keeping you plodding along at the same old pace.

Insurance in and of itself is not a rip-off: it gives peace, prosperity and opportunity. If, however, you don’t know what to look out for, then you can get a bad deal. We’ll get to that at point 6 of this article.

2. Is buying insurance betting on failure?

Yes, it is, but hedging your bets is a smart decision.

The business people who succeed long-term are the ones who carefully examine and plan for all the reasonable positive, neutral and negative outcomes of their situation. Insurance brokers are your experts at detecting and preventing the negative scenarios.

Go to a good insurance broker for, say, public liability insurance and you’ll soon find yourself in a conversation that dives deeply into the inner workings of your business. Expect to cover:

What your business model is
What your plans for expansion are
Who your clients are
How you pay your staff
Where you live and work
What your branding is
What your differentiation strategy is.

Once you have discussed all of these with your broker, they may then say: ‘Right, now here are the things we need to look at regarding your liabilities…’

This process is important, because you can only mitigate your risks after you have identified them. And facing your risks realistically is something only business owners with a certain level of sophistication or humility can do.

3. What are the differences between an insurer, an insurance broker and an insurance agent?

In answering this question, you must first understand that people usually source insurance in one of two ways:

They’re directed to a big insurer by a comparison website or Google search
Their accountant or lawyer refers them to an insurance broker.

In the case of option 1, the big insurers will either directly offer you a range of business insurance products (that are usually quite narrow in scope), or their insurance agents will intercede and consult with you about which of their employer’s product suites is best for you. (Note: An insurance agent can only sell their employers products.)

For option 2, however, an insurance broker has an unrestricted agreement to offer you the policies of any insurer. This means they’re free to sit down with you to figure out exactly what you need and what your business’ risks are. With that info they’ll shop around multiple insurance markets on your behalf. Once your broker has done their due diligence, they’ll come back to you with quotes and a recommendation about which insurance products and providers best suit your business’s needs.

4. Do I really need an insurance broker to help me understand the fine print?

Yes…with an if; no…with a but.

On one hand, Australian law is designed to protect consumers from being misled by insurers. When it comes to the PDS – or Product Disclosure Statement, the document containing what used to be called “fine print” – there is a ‘reasonable person test’.

It means if a reasonable person reading through the terms and conditions in the PDS would make a certain assumption, then, should a matter go to court, that assumption will generally be regarded as correct based on case precedence.

This puts the onus on the insurer to make their wordings clear, understandable and readable. If an insurance dispute does go to court and the wording is ambiguous or grey, more often than not, the courts will rule in favour of the claimant. In this regard, Australians are far more protected than, say, Americans.

On the other hand, most people do not want to read through their PDS – some are more than 50 pages. Even those who do read their PDS cover to cover usually have no idea of what to look for in terms of what has been left out.

A perfect example comes from the 2011 Queensland floods which destroyed something like 25,000 houses. Many homeowners who thought they had purchased adequate insurance beforehand were left up a creek without a paddle (pardon the pun). In the summary of their cover (the part that most people read) they saw “Flood cover: Yes”. Had they read the rest of the PDS, they would have seen this cover was capped at $50,000.

People were buying this policy partly because they thought it included “flood cover”. When they went to claim, they found they technically did have flood cover, but it was hardly enough to rebuild a devastated home.

Unlike most people, insurance brokers like myself love reading the fine print. We know which exclusions to look out for, which inclusions to ask for, and which insurers to steer clear of.

The above flood scenario wouldn’t happen to someone with a good insurance broker. We’re like any other trusted professional: you count on us to give you expert advice that’s in your best interest, because happy clients are in our best interest!

5. How could an insurance broker who doesn’t know my business possibly understand my risks?

Good question. If there’s one saying the entire insurance industry agrees on it’s probably: You don’t know what you don’t know.

I’m the first to concede that most small business owners understand the ins and outs of their own company far better than I could. At the same time, I also know that most people starting out on their business journey don’t have the time or inclination needed to study all the relevant risk trends affecting them. This is what insurance brokers like myself do (exciting, I know).

So, when a business owner and an insurance broker get together, they can combine their micro and macro understandings to form a full risk profile for the business at hand.

Take, for example, a cleaning business I am currently working with. The owner knew she needed cover for the equipment her staff use and could tell me down to the dollar the financial impact she’d suffer if one of those machines was out of action. She was also acutely aware of who her most important team members were. She knew all this, but had not accounted for one of the biggest risks her business faced: a new contract to have cleaners working at a shopping centre during business hours.

Most people wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a cleaner in a shopping centre, but most insurers would immediately recognise it as a very high-risk situation. Shopping centres are one of the most common places for slip, trip and fall personal injury claims. A single claim from a member of the public could have put her out of business or even bankrupted her!

Fortunately, once this particular business owner was made fully aware of this risk, I was able to work with her to mitigate it. We didn’t just source appropriate insurance, we also gave her advice on how she could reduce the likelihood of an accident occurring (which also lowered her premiums).

Now she’s insured and can keep her significant contracts and even land bigger contracts without having to worry about the real or perceived risks her business faces.

6. What are the warning signs for a dodgy insurance broker?

Every industry has bad apples. Insurance is no exception. The two tips I give to anyone looking for the right insurance broker for their business are:

Ask other business owners for a referral. Insurance brokers are like lawyers and accountants in that much of their business comes from happy customers passing their details onto someone else. A great broker will get a lot of their business through the grapevine.
Be wary of anyone who quotes without asking you questions about your business. Some brokers will send you a price for professional indemnity or other insurance products over the phone without even asking basic questions about what you do. In general, if the insurance is cheap and easy to get, it probably isn’t ideally suited to your business.

Ask tough questions to get good insurance cover

I really believe in the old saying: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Business insurance exists specifically to reinforce the “venture” part of that old proverb and make it more dependable. That’s why I truly believe the words underneath my logo: when you can repeat risks responsibly, you really reap rewards.

If you want to know more – or ask “stupid questions” – drop me a line at morgan.appleby@alleviate.insure. Why? Because there are no stupid questions.

Get to know Morgan Appleby, Director of Alleviate Risk

Posted on April 6, 2018January 12, 2021 by Alleviate

Alleviate Risk is a Brisbane-based business insurance broker that does things a little differently. Where other companies in the insurance industry focus on what happens after a claim, Alleviate Risk lives up to its name – advising its clients on how to alleviate risk in the first place. Find out more about Morgan Appleby, the man behind the business that aims to prevent its clients from ever actually making a claim.

Morgan Appleby Director — Morgan Appleby

Q: Most people equate the word “insurance” with “boring”, but that doesn’t seem to fit with your philosophy at Alleviate Risk. Why not?

Morgan: It’s true the insurance industry can seem boring to a lot of people, but it isn’t. Most businesses see insurance as a necessary evil to use to avoid taking risks or making a loss. At Alleviate Risk, we believe insurance should actually be the last line of defence for a business – part of a much broader strategy to manage risk.

Any entrepreneur will tell you that growing a successful business always includes some measure of risk. Alleviate Risk is about understanding the risks that are unique to each of their clients and working with them so that it does not impede progress, growth or ambition.

The thing you have to remember is every business, and every entrepreneur, needs insurance, but not every insurer is willing to work with every business. Most insurers avoid working with people who are really pushing the envelope, because it is too hard or too much work to understand and insure against unfamiliar risks, but these are the businesses I love working with.

I really enjoy getting to know my clients and their businesses on a personal level and the best part of what I do is watching a client achieve remarkable things, and knowing that I have contributed, in some small way, to their success.

Q: So, what makes Alleviate Risk different to the rest?

Morgan: Most insurance brokers think of their role in terms of protecting a client’s bottom line and insurance policies are how they defend it. They focus on having the best reaction to risk. It’s a mainstream way of understanding how business works and it suits mainstream businesses – there’s nothing wrong with that. However, for my clients, I like to use insurance as a last resort – which it is! Nobody wants things to go wrong. Nobody wants to make a claim.

People often think that when something goes wrong and triggers an insurance claim, it can be traced back to a single cause. That’s not actually the case. Each ‘cause’ is essentially all of their ‘ducks lining up’ in a way that they didn’t want (or plan) them to. When that happens, things go pear-shaped. For me to be the best insurance broker I can be, it means:

Understanding the risks faced by clients on a day-to-day basis, which includes economic, financial, legislative, environmental, professional and even online risks
Advising my clients on how to prevent the ‘ducks’ from lining up in a detrimental way
Ensuring they get the best outcome if this happens.

Understanding risk and probability is often counter-intuitive. Business intuition is great, but it often means an entrepreneur can focus too heavily on the things they already know and can control and not pay enough attention to possible sources of risk. The cognitive reasons for this bias are really interesting and something we can talk about later.

Q: What does it mean for clients who have difficulty transacting with mainstream insurers, when you can get them the right insurance cover?

Morgan: Well as an example, for some of my clients who work in adventure sports or in conflict zones, not being able to get insurance not only puts a cap on their ambitions and growth potential, but it can even prevent them from doing business at all.

When I can get them the cover they need for what they want to do, they’re free to seize more of the opportunities that will allow them to succeed. Their insurance cover stops being a limiting factor and instead becomes an enabling factor: a soft place to land that doesn’t hinder their passion, drive or creativity.

Q: And what about Alleviate Risk – how did it all start? And have you applied this ethos in your own business?

Morgan: I worked as a financial adviser with Suncorp for several years and things were going really well. However, our entire division was downsized when there was a change in CEO in 2003. So, in 2004, a colleague and I founded our own commercial insurance brokerage.

We worked together and had a lot of success over the next 11 years, but eventually we each wanted to achieve different things in business. We parted ways about 3 years ago, after which I founded Alleviate Risk and things have been going from strength to strength ever since.

Was there a risk in starting my own business? Sure. But, as I said earlier, you can’t grow without taking any risks. When I first started Alleviate Risk, I took a lot of financial risks, investing in capable staff, corporate branding, a new premises and a range of professional development activities. But these were all measured risks which provided many opportunities for growth, both in business and personally, over the years.

Since then, we have been through some tough times and some not so tough times, but on balance, every risk has paid off. Some people see risk as something to avoid, but I see risk as opportunity – provided it is managed properly.

Q: You mentioned that you have participated in a range of professional development activities. Has your constant study and self-development been a part of your success?

Morgan: I definitely feel like I have learnt and grown an incredible amount over the past 10 years. After studying a Graduate Certificate in Business Administration at QUT, I went on to complete a Master of Business Administration in 2012, majoring in Strategy and Entrepreneurship and Innovation. This study gave me with both the knowledge and skills to develop innovative strategies, in order to help businesses survive and thrive in an increasingly complex environment.

Also, I am currently undertaking a Postgraduate Certificate in the Psychology of Risk and Decision Making through ACU, and so far, I am loving it. Yes, it has taken a lot of effort and some people (including my wife) have asked why I would want to do all of that extra work while running a business.

I guess it’s just in my nature: never standing still, always learning new skills and looking for a better way to do things. I’m not the type of person to get into a routine and then be happy just plodding along. Solving the same problem in the same way over and over – that’s boring. That’s why I love the challenge of finding cover for hard-to-place risks and discovering ways to keep those pesky ‘ducks’ apart!

Q: What is it that you love so much about the study you are doing now?

Morgan: Something I have been thinking a lot about recently is cognitive ease, which we touched on earlier a little. It’s the idea that when you ask someone to think about things they are familiar with or things that are easy to understand, then they’ll perceive those things as more true.

However, when you ask them to engage with things that take a lot of thought, or are new and/or obscure, they are predisposed to see those things as less relevant or true. You can see how this relates to insurance, which is all about working with elements that are hard to predict or hard to detect.

The reason this interests me so much is that I always knew ‘cognitive ease’ existed, but I never knew the name for it or the science behind it. I came across it while reading the famous book Thinking, Fast And Slow, which you might also have read.

The most amazing part is that the section of a person’s brain that makes decisions is excessively lazy. It will usually just navigate towards the path of most familiarity and least resistance. It’s the same way that a lot of businesses bring risk into their systems by always choosing a familiar process.

They don’t actually stop to consider what better options there may be. The human function for processing risk is quite fascinating and I firmly believe that if you stay in the same place for too long, the world will simply overtake you and leave you behind.

So my role in helping clients avoid making claims is literally challenging their existing thought processes, biases, assumptions and attitudes, to come up with a better way. That’s what Alleviate Risk stands for, and when you think about insurance this way, it’s not boring at all.