Why The Lowest Premium Is Rarely The Lowest Cost
When people talk about risk, the conversation usually starts with events. Fires. Floods. Accidents. Claims that make the news or at least make a mess of someone’s week.
What tends to sit outside the conversation is something far less dramatic and far more expensive over time. Friction.
Friction is the delay that no one planned for. The extra email chains. The phone calls that go nowhere. The moment a straightforward claim turns complicated, not because cover is missing, but because information is. We see it regularly. A policy that responds in principle but takes weeks to progress because the right documents were never gathered. A renewal completed on assumptions that seemed reasonable at the time, then unravel under scrutiny. A business owner spending hours, sometimes days, tracking down records they never imagined would be needed.
These costs are rarely obvious. They do not appear as a line item on a balance sheet and they are difficult to quantify after the fact. Instead, they surface as lost time, delayed decisions, mounting frustration and distraction from the work that actually keeps a business running.
Certain friction points appear again and again. Asset registers that are incomplete or out of date. Plant and equipment with no photos, no serial numbers, no paper trail. Fitouts that have changed over time with no record of when or how. Policies renewed year after year without a meaningful conversation about how the business now operates compared to how it did five years ago.
None of these issues feel urgent when everything is running smoothly. In fact, they often feel safely theoretical. During a claim, they are anything but.
Whilst good insurance may be about whether something is technically covered, the right insurance is about how accessible that cover is under pressure. How quickly information can be produced. How easily questions can be answered. The less friction that exists before something goes wrong, the more predictable and manageable the process tends to be when it does.
In our experience, time spent reducing friction rarely feels urgent in the moment. It almost always proves worthwhile later.
When people talk about risk, the conversation usually starts with events. Fires. Floods. Accidents. Claims that make the news or at least make a mess of someone’s week.
What tends to sit outside the conversation is something far less dramatic and far more expensive over time. Friction.
Friction is the delay that no one planned for. The extra email chains. The phone calls that go nowhere. The moment a straightforward claim turns complicated, not because cover is missing, but because information is. We see it regularly. A policy that responds in principle but takes weeks to progress because the right documents were never gathered. A renewal completed on assumptions that seemed reasonable at the time, then unravel under scrutiny. A business owner spending hours, sometimes days, tracking down records they never imagined would be needed.
These costs are rarely obvious. They do not appear as a line item on a balance sheet and they are difficult to quantify after the fact. Instead, they surface as lost time, delayed decisions, mounting frustration and distraction from the work that actually keeps a business running.
Certain friction points appear again and again. Asset registers that are incomplete or out of date. Plant and equipment with no photos, no serial numbers, no paper trail. Fitouts that have changed over time with no record of when or how. Policies renewed year after year without a meaningful conversation about how the business now operates compared to how it did five years ago.
None of these issues feel urgent when everything is running smoothly. In fact, they often feel safely theoretical. During a claim, they are anything but.
Whilst good insurance may be about whether something is technically covered, the right insurance is about how accessible that cover is under pressure. How quickly information can be produced. How easily questions can be answered. The less friction that exists before something goes wrong, the more predictable and manageable the process tends to be when it does.
In our experience, time spent reducing friction rarely feels urgent in the moment. It almost always proves worthwhile later.
When people talk about risk, the conversation usually starts with events. Fires. Floods. Accidents. Claims that make the news or at least make a mess of someone’s week.
What tends to sit outside the conversation is something far less dramatic and far more expensive over time. Friction.
Friction is the delay that no one planned for. The extra email chains. The phone calls that go nowhere. The moment a straightforward claim turns complicated, not because cover is missing, but because information is. We see it regularly. A policy that responds in principle but takes weeks to progress because the right documents were never gathered. A renewal completed on assumptions that seemed reasonable at the time, then unravel under scrutiny. A business owner spending hours, sometimes days, tracking down records they never imagined would be needed.
These costs are rarely obvious. They do not appear as a line item on a balance sheet and they are difficult to quantify after the fact. Instead, they surface as lost time, delayed decisions, mounting frustration and distraction from the work that actually keeps a business running.
Certain friction points appear again and again. Asset registers that are incomplete or out of date. Plant and equipment with no photos, no serial numbers, no paper trail. Fitouts that have changed over time with no record of when or how. Policies renewed year after year without a meaningful conversation about how the business now operates compared to how it did five years ago.
None of these issues feel urgent when everything is running smoothly. In fact, they often feel safely theoretical. During a claim, they are anything but.
Whilst good insurance may be about whether something is technically covered, the right insurance is about how accessible that cover is under pressure. How quickly information can be produced. How easily questions can be answered. The less friction that exists before something goes wrong, the more predictable and manageable the process tends to be when it does.
In our experience, time spent reducing friction rarely feels urgent in the moment. It almost always proves worthwhile later.
