Broker trade associations set out their stalls to attract more members

The chairman of the PMI Focus Group at the British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA) is urging intermediaries to join the trade body which he claims has “far more clout” than the Association of Medical Insurance Intermediaries (AMII).

The group, chaired by Glen Smith of Essex-based intermediary HealthCare Partners Ltd, was established in November 2007. Current priorities include the establishment of an industry protocol on claims transparency, a standardised wording for letters of authority and greater equity in the way that insurers treat brokers with regard to commission.

“I’ve been a member of AMII since the start and I suppose I felt a certain frustration that the cost of membership was going up and I could not see what value for money it was delivering for me as a company,” said Smith. “BIBA is obviously a much larger organisation and has an ability to reach out to bodies and actually make things happen. You can use BIBA’s resources to change things.”

BIBA has a secretariat of 15 members of staff providing advice and technical support to members.

Mike Izzard, chairman of AMII, both defended his organisation’s effectiveness and said he was willing to work with BIBA on certain key topics.

“We are setting the agenda,” he said. “We are talking with all the right people and we are getting things done.”

Izzard pointed to the establishment of a PMI qualification in association with the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII).

Both parties denied that Smith’s comments signalled a rift between the two organisations, although some of the members of the BIBA PMI Focus Group have been outspoken critics of AMII in the past.

Izzard was particularly at pains to point out that both organisations have a place and he is keen to work in partnership with BIBA for the greater good.

“BIBA is big in the general insurance market but it has its own dynamics and PMI insurers don’t see the need for it because all the big players in the PMI sector are members of AMII,” he added. “Although the PMI group has its own identity within BIBA a lot of intermediaries don’t see it as natural fit but where they do they like to see AMII and BIBA working together.”

Izzard is keen for the two organisations to continue working collaboratively through a PMI task group, which started life as a claims sharing debate.

Although Izzard said he is confident that “next year we should contain all the big brokers”, some intermediaries remain sceptical about the value of joining either AMII or BIBA.

“I would join a trade association if I thought it had real teeth and could influence insurers and in some case politicians,” said Alan Mulligan of Manchester-based Personal Healthcare Management, who is a member of neither AMII nor BIBA. “The first question is, what do I, as a broker, get out of being a member other than the ability to use a logo that the paying public have never heard of? I have yet to hear an influencing answer.”

Mulligan said he was willing to listen to and comment on either the further development of AMII or the introduction of another association “as long as it’s not just another opportunity for someone to ask for a fee”.

“I suppose the starting point is what do brokers want?” he said. “The questions have to be asked of specialist brokers and put to good use by a good and true representative of that clan.”

Other intermediary organisations which are not members of either the BIBA PMI Focus Group or AMII include two of the most influential in the country, Lorica Consulting and Buck Consultants. However, two of the other “big hitter” healthcare advisory firms, Mercer and PMI Health Group, are members of BIBA. The Private Health Partnership is currently a member of both BIBA and AMII and its sales & marketing director, Stuart Scullion, is a member of the BIBA PMI Focus Group.