In the interests of getting a stronger voice, should the Association of Medical Insurance Intermediaries (AMII) be forging greater links with the British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA), or will this mean a loss of direction?
Andy Couchman, Protection Review
I have to start with a caveat – I do some work with AMII and BIBA, so my views are unlikely to be unbiased.
That said, I do think that AMII is right to forge stronger links with BIBA – and for two good reasons.
First, the simple reality is that BIBA is a bigger organisation, with a bigger constituency, greater lobbying power and greater experience.
And, from BIBA’s perspective, AMII is highly focused, knows the Private Medical Insurance (PMI) market inside out and is hungry to achieve real positive change for its members but also for the benefit of employers and the wider public. So there is a natural synergy there.
The second reason is that to grow the market we need to get more brokers and IFAs interested in PMI.
As we found in research we will be publishing next month in Protection Review, the Retail Distribution Review will encourage that to some extent, but we need to do more.
Also two voices with the same message are stronger than two voices with different messages.
It is all too easy for our industry to speak with conflicting voices and, while that may satisfy a few egos short term, it simply means that government and others can more easily choose to ignore us long term.
Just as with the Government itself, some compromise will be necessary, but I welcome AMII’s ambitions and the strategy looks to have great potential.
The challenge will be converting that into practice and actually achieving the potential benefits while maintaining the independence of both organisations.
Debbie Kleiner-Gaines, Best Health UK
There is no doubt that BIBA has a much louder voice than AMII when it comes to lobbying Government.
While AMII have excellent relationships with insurers, lobbying is naturally harder for a small specialist organisation.
The combination of the two organisations working together and playing on each others strengths makes absolute sense.
However, a ‘marriage’ between AMII and BIBA doesn’t seem necessary to achieve a stronger voice, just good communication.
There is nothing worse than wasted effort and it seemed sensible for AMII to approach BIBA to meet to openly discuss potential avenues of working together.
One of the AMII committee members also sits on the BIBA Health Insurance Focus Group and I would hope that going forward there will be more communication between the two groups, especially following their meetings.
With the new AMII/CII PMI exam set up, the AMII Committee is looking into educational programmes to help deliver the coursebook. They are also keen to put pressure on the market with regard to delivery of transfer certificates and ensuring total claims transparency in the PMI market.
Forging stronger links with BIBA will be beneficial to both parties as well as their membership.
Kahlil Gibran’s Marriage speech in The Prophet states “stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart” and my feeling is that AMII will have no issues with loss of direction if they follow this advice.
Peter Lurie, Proactive Medical and Life
The role of BIBA gives insurance intermediaries a real voice among the general insurance (GI) industry.
It sets a benchmark for specialist associations like AMII by helping develop its full ideology and opening up to many more specialist advisers entering the PMI market.
Many IFAs who I speak to are now looking for more guidance and alternative inroads into advising on PMI, however, many find PMI by its pure nature fairly complex and potentially difficult to sell.
By forging these greater links with BIBA, AMII will grow on its specialist position in the PMI market with greater force and more credibility, and should gain greater understanding among more protection focused specialists and IFAs.
The ideology of AMII gives specialist advisers a voice within the industry and has many similar principles to BIBA.
It is committed to help make the industry as a whole a safer place to conduct business and supports full commitment by FSA regulation and raising standards by introducing new CII approved specialist exams, such as the new medical insurance curriculum.
Having met the previous and current chairman and done significant research on both BIBA and AMII it has only given our own specialist firm more confidence in considering joining the association and we feel that forging links with BIBA can only enhance AMII’s reputation and great work it is conducting in this specialist market.
Its role is set to become stronger as we see more protection based products including benefits such as PMI.
Richard Kerton, PMI Partners
“Speak with one voice”, is one of AMII’s main objectives.
One of AMII’s main strengths is that it represents a group of specialist intermediaries who often have little or no other GI business.
With the appointment of the new chairman Andrew Tripp, it will be interesting from my perspective to see if this brings a stronger link to BIBA.
He has already stressed the importance of the connections that AMII have with the CII in developing new qualifications for the PMI sector, and the constant evolution that AMII needs to gain a stronger position for its members.
BIBA are a much larger body due to it covering all GI business, this naturally gives them a stronger voice with the regulators.
This would then suggest any stronger links between the two bodies is a good thing as it gives AMII a larger collective voice.
I think that AMII need to do a better job at recruiting new members thus getting a larger influence over regulators, without the need of getting too close to other groups such as BIBA.
By promoting themselves and encouraging more members to join this will grow the group, naturally giving them a more independent role and a stronger voice.
There can be no harm to forging better links with BIBA, providing this does not lead to any form of amalgamation producing a loss of focus over the PMI sector.
They must constantly strive to ensure they are still promoting PMI to the larger network of insurers, brokers and regulators.
