WPA is intending to re-enter the private medical insurance (PMI) broker market with the launch of an online system that will remove the administrative burden from IFAs selling the insurer's products.
For the past five years WPA has been sold through a national network of 100 franchised agents who target the individual and SME markets, with the bulk of an agent's income through high retention levels, and this system will remain. The proposed IFA market will target those companies of between 15 and 50 personnel, a market WPA believes is ripe for growth.
Adrian Humphreys, managing director, corporate at WPA, explained: We are looking for 10 - or 15 if pushed - IFAs to sell into this market. We are not looking at the larger employee benefit firms here, but the smaller IFAs."
WPA has also approached the Association of Medical Insurance Intermediaries (AMII) to discuss selling solely through its membership, although it is understood these talks are at a preliminary stage.
The insurer is also unveiling a new underwriting system for these larger SME sales that, says Humphreys, will almost totally remove the administrative burden from the IFA: "The policy will be auto underwritten. We don't believe that any other PMI insurer in the market can currently do this."
The new system has been built and trialled and will go live on April 15.
