Trade Voice: Biba’s Steve White on why brokers should share good news stories

At Biba, we are proud to hold our own journalist awards recognising how important the media is in helping inform and educate our sector and its customers, and the entries coming in caused me to pause and consider the news landscape.

Back in the day, we perhaps switched on the radio or TV before heading to work, or picked up a newspaper to scan the latest. Now, though, regardless of how you digest your news, keeping on top of local, national, sector or world events can be addictive. How many of us frantically scan Linkedin or Twitter or one of the news apps to check whether the world has ended since we fell asleep? Never have we been more connected. Never have so many people seen the same story.

What does this appetite to stay informed mean for us in our sector?

Sadly, the amazing work done by our sector doesn’t always cut the mustard in the consumer press. I do understand why.

PR is certainly a double-edged sword. A firm or personality can be a media darling one week and a pariah the next – dare I mention the younger members of the royal family? And for businesses, CEOs can be just one link away from a reputational disaster – I’m thinking Elon Musk’s Twitter own goal and the much-scrutinised HS2 development (or lack of).

Now, our sector is acutely aware of its reputation. We know millions of pounds are paid to our customers every day for claims made. We know we support the resilience of businesses and people and can help build stability in these challenging economic times.

Sadly, the amazing work done by our sector doesn’t always cut the mustard in the consumer press. I do understand why. In general, a claim gone badly can create a much more compelling read than ‘woman buys insurance and doesn’t need to claim’, or ‘insurance firm pays in full within 24 hours’! The latter is never going to trend on Twitter (other social media sites are available). But that doesn’t help us or our reputation.

Brokers are embedded in their communities, and we hear many times over about customer delight in how their insurance has been arranged or their claim sorted. Our members, and the insurance capacity they use, can and do make a positive difference to firms’ fortunes and to peoples’ lives.

Let us embrace the good that our sector does, and use all the communications channels we have.

We have started sharing such case studies with the consumer media, and slowly we are starting to see them covered – and we hope seen – in many a news feed. We are a long way from trending, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. It is time for us to change. Let us embrace the good that our sector does, and use all the communications channels we have. We need our customers to choose us with confidence. We need school-leavers and graduates to see our success stories and join us. Let’s bite the bullet and discuss what we do well in public forums. Let us explain insurance in a way that the ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’ (to use a past-used CII study book phrase) or your 17-year-old niece would understand. If people can embrace the vagaries of bitcoin trading, they can understand how insurance works and some of its complexities.

I know many of you reading this will rightly be proud of the day of work you have just finished or that is about to start. If we amplify that pride and talk about it and share, perhaps that feelgood factor about insurance will start to percolate into the mass consciousness of the UK. And when that happens, we will know when we get it right, because we’ll see it in our news feeds!