The true business of broking

The flood disasters in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland devastated communities. Thankfully, brokers were there to play a role in speeding up the recovery. Insurance Adviser spoke with Wendy Keeling of BMS Coast to Coast in Burleigh Heads to discover the lengths she and the team went to, to help the local community begin to get back on its feet.

It’s a well-worn saying in the industry – you only get to understand the true value of a broker when it’s time to make a claim. And for many on the north-eastern coast of NSW and southern Queensland, that notion’s been well and truly put to the test over the past couple of years.

While placing a policy can bring challenges for brokers, managing claims and – equally importantly – managing clients during that claims process, is when the true value of working with a broker really comes to the fore.

Wendy Keeling knows this only too well. The Claims and Office Manager of BMS Coast to Coast in Burleigh Heads, Queensland, was only a day into her new role when the rain started to fall, so she immediately got into the car and ended up spending the best part of three months on the ground helping people, clients and non-clients alike, get their claims in.

“We were out every single day,” explains Keeling, who prior to joining Dale Hansen’s BMS Coast to Coast worked in loss adjusting.

“We had a car laden up with food and water and dog food and basically drove around seeing our clients who were cut off. Supermarkets were empty, and we were walking into premises of family-owned businesses that didn’t know if they’d ever get back up and running again.”

Of course, it wasn’t the first time flooding had hit the regions and Keeling says the sense of despondency was palpable, particularly among those who’d been through the last flood, and had rebuilt everything to a higher level, and still suffered.

“That brought home very, very quickly to me just how big this catastrophe was – not in geographical terms, but in the emotional sense.

“This was bigger than anything I’ve ever experienced. I’ve been involved in the response to Cyclone Debbie, and I’ve done the Townsville floods, but this was different.

“Going out as a broker, to your own clients, seeing them so desperate, not knowing if they were going to survive, is a very humbling experience.”

A warm smile and a big hug

The response of Wendy and the team at BMS Coast to Coast was a shining example of all that’s good about insurance, and illustrated perfectly the way brokers can help the communities they’re part of. Wendy says seeing a friendly face and receiving a warm hug genuinely does make a difference – and the scenes she witnessed motivated her and the team to help as much as they possibly could.

“After seeing the trouble people were in, I came back with the attitude that we needed to do something different, and that we should be really looking at this catastrophe in a different light.

“We contacted every single client within 48 hours. I just took all of our brokers and assistants off all the work they were doing and they rang every single client just to make that personal call, see how they were, lodging every single claim that we could straight away through our in-house claims team.

“I then personally appointed restorers and builders, using my networks, to some of those clients that I knew needed them the most.”

Having someone on your side

Wendy’s a great believer in the relational side of insurance – those relationships make all of the difference, particularly when it comes to claims, and over the months that followed she dedicated herself to getting claims paid.

“I personally have attended almost every single hydrology appointment, pointed out every stormwater drain, and I’ve overturned countless decisions that have initially told us it was flood, when in reality it wasn’t the proximate cause of the damage.

“We’ve also done so much personal stuff. I’ve moved people in my car into temporary accommodation because a taxi wasn’t covered. I got five members of the team here to go around to a lady’s house, and we moved all of her boxes into the house for her. I wanted to do that because I wanted the staff to see that these are real people – they’re not just policyholders or statistics.”

The extent to which Wendy has helped some of the most vulnerable members of the community reinforces the dedication she and the BMS Coast to Coast team has.

“One of my clients, who is the one that touched my heart more than any – and I visit her every couple of months – has severe stress, anxiety, PTSD and all different sorts of medical conditions.

“I would go see her regularly, and the claim just went from bad to worse – we even got to a point where the tiler had gone in and laid the wrong colour tiles.

“I put her in the car and we went and purchased new ones so I could take them back to get the tiler to pull them up there and then because I knew there would be a delay if we didn’t do it immediately. I bought her an air conditioning unit with our money because she didn’t have one in her temporary accommodation and just basically had to hold her hand through every single Loss Adjuster appointment every single builder appointment.”

Being on the ground has made a huge difference from a community perspective, and investing that much into the community has naturally attracted enquiries from others asking how BMS Coast to Coast can help, to the extent that the business has been managing claims on policies they didn’t even write –purely because it’s the right thing to do.

The need for change

A major topic that’s been highlighted by this disaster, says Wendy, is the definition of a vulnerable person.

“I’ve helped a number of vulnerable clients. Some with PTSD, one who tried to commit suicide last year. People have had strokes. And all the industry says we need to do is identify vulnerable people and that’s it – it stops, and there’s no guidance for insurers about what to do from there. If we’re lucky, there’s a little marker on the system to say a person’s vulnerable, and that’s it.

“I’m attending all sorts of meetings, I’m speaking with NIBA and the ICA to help the industry identify and categorise what vulnerable is, so we can collectively better help people.

“I’m trying to drive this change, and have an industry-wide conversation about this because I don’t think the solution is that difficult.

“I sat with someone who I thought we were losing, and I told her I couldn’t change what had happened, but I promised her I’d try not to let that happen to anyone again, and that motivates me to change how we deal with those who need us most.”