We would like to take this opportunity to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from everyone at HB Underwriting!
We would also like to share some of the things that have shaped this year at HB Underwriting and inform you of our opening hours over the festive period.
Christmas Opening Hours:
Friday 24th December – 8:30am-12:30pm
Monday 27th December – Closed
Tuesday 28th December – Closed
Wednesday 29th December – 8:30am-5pm
Thursday 30th December – 8:30am-5pm
Friday 31st December – 8:30am-12:30pm
Monday 3rd January – Closed
Tuesday 4th January – 8:30am-5pm
You can find rradar’s contact details, opening hours, access to digital services or crisis line here.
A Round Up of 2021 from HB Underwriting
What a year it has been, with some highs and lows, really testing our resilience and tenacity to push forward. Here are some of the things that have shaped our year:
Family Legal Expenses
Having received and taken on board invaluable feedback from our brokers, April 2021 saw the inclusion of Family Legal Expenses as a standard policy section of Rural Protect. This cover enhancement was created to enable our brokers to simplify the legal cover offering to customers and bring everything under one policy, doing away with the need for Rural Protect customers to keep in force separate Family Legal Expenses insurance under their Farm Combined policy.
rradar’s Digital Tools
We have continued to encourage our brokers to discuss rradar’s online digital tools with their clients, so that their clients can benefit from all the advice, templates, topics and support that is provided, for free, with their Rural Protect policy. Setting up the online account also helps simplify the claims process, should the unfortunate happen and rradar need to act for the client.
Rural Protect Resources
Interactive Literature – To provide you, our brokers, and your clients with a better user experience, we have made all our rradar, Rural Protect and Rural Protect Elements resources and documents available online. Please get in touch if you don’t have access to these yet.
Q&A Video – We recently recorded a Q&As video on Rural Protect where we explain what it is, answer some common questions like “What do premiums start at?”, and also highlight where Rural Protect comes into its own. We hope that this will help you in learning about and selling the Rural Protect products to clients.
Client Leaflet – To assist you in explaining the importance of the cover provided by Rural Protect and Rural Protect Elements, we created a client facing leaflet that explains how the policy protects them and also focuses on the size of claims that are met by the policy.
Broker Notes – To accompany the Rural Protect Client Leaflet, we have also created a helpful Broker Notes document that gives you technical content and background to the information provided to clients in the leaflet.
Gabbro
2021 also saw the unveiling of the latest addition to our product suite – Gabbro, a home contents insurance product for renters in social or affordable housing. Gabbro was the brainchild of Mike Millard, our former Product Development Manager who sadly lost his battle with cancer earlier this year. Mike saw an opportunity in this demographic to offer something new and focus on financial resilience. We partnered up with InsureTech Urban Jungle, and major insurer NIG, part of the Direct Line Group, to offer a unique home insurance product with features specifically designed to help those on low incomes or where financial resilience is weak.
Gabbro is a direct-to-consumer product, available to purchase online or via Local Authorities, Registered Social Landlords (RSL’s) and other partners who assist their customers in sourcing relevant home insurance.
HB Team
In August, we welcomed Rachel Kelly to the team as our Partnerships Manager. Rachel now looks after our Rural Protect Broker panel while also building new product distribution for products, such as Gabbro.
Just this month we have also welcomed Corrine Woosnam who has joined us as Assistant Underwriter, and in the New Year, we will be welcoming Becki Gee who will be joining us as Underwriting & Operations Manager.
Looking ahead
Next year, we will be making updates to our IT platform to improve on the service that our brokers receive. Some of the benefits include automatically quoting higher levels of cover or other products being available based on the information obtained in the quote journey, enabling you to provide more choice to your clients without the need for endless re-quotes.
We are also updating our Training Hub and will have a new portal available soon. Our Training Hub will house all of our product literature and learning modules, helping your teams further their Rural Protect knowledge. Don’t forget, we are happy to provide Rural Protect training, either on a one-to-one or team basis, so please do get in touch if you think this would be beneficial.
Thank you
Finally, we would like to thank our brokers and partners for choosing to work with us throughout 2021, and we look forward to working with you on the next chapter.
We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous and safe New Year.
The HB Underwriting Team
P.S. Take a look back at our year in blogs! You can view them all, here.
