Busy or Better? Why Insurance Advice Is Quietly Changing
This article is based on earlier work that appeared, in adapted form, as a knowledge piece in the Dutch professional insurance press.
A quiet doubt most brokers recognise
Nearly four years ago, I sat down to write a column for a Dutch trade magazine. The question I kept circling around was simple: are we actually focusing on the right things, or are we just running faster? I had spent almost twenty years in the industry by then, and I could not shake the feeling that something fundamental was off.
That column eventually led to Onesurance. And now, after working with brokers and MGAs across the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the UK, I find myself back at the same question. Not because I did not find an answer -- but because the answer keeps getting sharper the more I see.
The Friday-afternoon doubt that I used to feel when running my own MGA? I hear it from nearly every broker I sit down with. Are we spending our time where it matters? Or are we just... busy?
When growth starts to stretch the model
Most brokerages look fine from the outside. Portfolios grow, clients get serviced, the phones ring. But behind the scenes, the model creaks. You absorb a portfolio through acquisition and suddenly you have 30% more policies but the same number of advisers. Expectations shift -- clients who were happy with an annual review now expect you to notice things before they do.
I have seen this pattern in firms across four countries now. The specifics differ -- FCA Consumer Duty in the UK, consolidation pressure in the Netherlands, Maklerpool dynamics in Germany -- but the underlying tension is the same. Adviser capacity grows linearly. Portfolio complexity does not.
Structure brings order, but not always relevance
When I ran my own book, we had contact cycles, review schedules, the whole apparatus. And it worked -- in the sense that things happened on time and nobody fell through the cracks too badly.
What it did not do was tell us whether any of it actually mattered. I remember looking at our contact reports and realising that some of our most stable, lowest-risk clients were getting more face time than accounts where genuinely interesting things were happening. Not because anyone planned it that way, but because the cycle said it was their turn. I see the exact same pattern in firms we work with today. It is remarkably persistent.
From activity to judgement
The question I keep coming back to, and the one that has only gotten stronger after nearly four years of building: what if the value of advice has less to do with how much of it happens, and more to do with whether it happens at the right moment, for the right person?
I say that not to be clever, but because I spent years confusing the two. And now, having seen it from the technology side, I can tell you the data confirms what I always suspected: most activity in a brokerage is not directed at the clients where it would make the biggest difference.
What we have actually learned
Here is what surprised me most over the past few years. I expected the technology to be the hard part. It was not. The hard part is getting people to trust a different way of working. When an adviser receives a signal -- this client's risk profile has changed, this renewal needs a real conversation, this account is showing early signs of leaving -- the first reaction is usually scepticism. Fair enough. I would have been sceptical too.
But once they act on it and it works -- once a flagged call actually prevents a client from leaving, or a cross-sell suggestion turns out to be exactly right -- the scepticism evaporates. That transition, from doubt to daily habit, is the moment where things actually change. And it happens faster than I expected.
Not all clients are equal, even if we treat them that way
This is the uncomfortable truth that nobody really likes to say out loud: a small group of clients represents most of your long-term value. Another group carries a disproportionate amount of risk. And then there is the large middle -- decent clients, decent revenue, but receiving a fairly generic level of attention because there are only so many hours in a day.
We have seen firms shift their adviser time towards relevance rather than routine, and the results are consistent: better retention, higher cross-sell rates, and -- this is the part that always gets me -- happier advisers. It turns out people enjoy their work more when they feel like their conversations actually matter.
Final thought
Four years ago, I wrote about whether our industry was running faster or moving forward. I did not have an answer then. I am not sure I have a complete one now. But I have seen enough to know this: the firms that match their attention to what actually matters in the portfolio, rather than what the calendar says, consistently outperform the ones that do not. That is not a theory. It is what happens when you give smart people better information at the right time.
Advice is not going anywhere. But the idea that every client gets the same treatment, on the same schedule, regardless of what is actually happening in their world -- most brokers I talk to seem relieved rather than threatened when I suggest that might be ending. It means the job becomes more interesting, not less.