One celebrated robo-advice site does nothing to help the customer decide which insurance to choose when the budget crunch has to be acknowledged.

Fear can be a positive motivator, and insurance advisers have known that since the days when sales training consisted of different ways to ‘back the hearse up to the living room window’ – metaphorically, of course.

A couple of weeks ago, when I wrote about the importance and knowing your own mind when considering the future, a couple of dealer group leaders thought my article was 'anti-group'.

If you don't make plans yourself you will become part of somebody else's. It's an old saying but it’s true.

Once upon a time we had this corporate guru come and talk to us about teams and communications.

It still strikes me as amazing that lots and lots of home loan insurance is sold and not very much “you get to keep your home” insurance is sold.

Imagine an adviser presenting a large per-mile loading for motorbike racing. The client is looking at the choice between the exclusion and the eye-wateringly large cost with the loading. How do they respond?

I cannot tell you how many different fact-finds I have seen in the last twenty years – and how rarely are they completed in full.

Customers can be unhappy from many causes. The worst is when the claim didn’t pay. The lurching, sinking feeling when the decision is relayed to you, or the client calls.

Should people buy their kids first insurance package?

A lot of what most people know is incomplete, or rubbish.

How tough is it competing with banks for the sale of insurance? The has been a lot of growth in the bancassurance segment over the last ten years, but lately it looks like advisers have had the best of it.

Should New Zealand scrap the consumer’s duty to disclose? That statement appears shocking at first, but it has a particular meaning. It doesn’t mean that it would be OK for applicants to lie on their application forms.

What ordinary people think is advice, what we think advice is, and what the law defines as financial advice vary a bit. So what is advice? Does it matter if your client knows?

Of course some advisers don’t like trauma insurance at all, but if you do include it in packages, then having a sound approach to setting the sum insured is worth thinking about.