Now is the perfect time to reflect on how competence can be used as a tool to help you attract and win more business.

Happy New Year! It’s January, which means I probably have one of two routes to explore when writing this article: roll out my crystal ball to try to predict the year ahead, and tell you how training will help you overcome the challenges we face to stop us heading into a dystopian nightmare; or, I could whip you up into a frenzy to make sure that your resolution for 2023 is to invest in your personal development now, by breaking your CPD down into manageable chunks over the year, and not leave it until December to be rushing around filling in CPD logs when you would rather be having a Christmas lunch with your clients.

But that’s not what learning and development is really about, and you may be relieved to know that I’m not going to do that, so please continue…

Now is the perfect time to reflect on how competence can be used as a tool to help you attract and win more business.

Most insurance professionals will be familiar with the term, “this function must be completed by a competent person.” Competence is made up of three things: Knowledge, Understanding and Application.

When describing competence to our clients, we like to use the following brick wall analogy:

Consider you had to build a wall. Do you know what goes into making a wall? You might say bricks and cement. This is the knowledge (I know what goes into making a wall).

Do you know the theory of how to make that wall? Do you know the proportions needed to mix cement, etc? This is the understanding (I understand how a wall is made).

If you had all the basic tools and materials, could you build a wall? This is the application. Taking that knowledge and understanding and applying it to completing the wall.

If you don't have the knowledge or understanding, then you cannot build the wall and will not be competent to do so.

Now take it a step further. You might be competent in building a basic wall. What happens if someone wants a curvy wall, or wants to put windows in a wall? Your level of competence may not be able to do this. What if you have different grades of wall with benchmarks (how long will it stand? How pretty is it? What forces will it withstand? Etc.)?

Go further again, what happens when a standards agency has to assess your work on that wall and tells you that it must be built to certain regulations? What level of wall building competence do you need so that they can successfully assess and sign off your work?

It is clear to see from this example that competence is a combination of a number of factors, and to remain competent, you would have to study new methods, techniques, materials, regulations and design on a regular basis to maintain a up-to-date understanding.

So, how can this help you grow and develop as a business?

Imagine that you need to build a reasonably complex wall at home – how would you go about choosing the right person or firm to do it? You probably wouldn’t just ring the first name in the phone book and ask them to start tomorrow. There would be lots of considerations that you would make, but ultimately you would want to choose someone who gave you the confidence in their own competence to do the job.

Using the wall analogy, think about what your level of competence as an MGA is and what you might need to do to stand out from the competition:

• Do you have a speciality or an industry focus that helps you differentiate from other agencies? Think about how you can promote that expertise or niche and use it to carve out a market leading reputation.
• Tell the market that you invest in developing and maintaining the skills of your people and show them the evidence. This is often overlooked. By promoting your efforts in training and CPD, you are building confidence in your market reputation, and it can also help you attract new staff who see it as a benefit.
• Have you identified skills gaps that puts your competence at a lower level or grade? Think about how you might fill those gaps and be able to offer a better service and reduce the potential for complaints. It’s sometimes better value to train and retain staff than to go through the large expense of recruiting new talent, particularly in the current talent crisis.
• What will you do if your best talent leaves? Without providing training opportunities, you may find your best and most competent people start to look elsewhere. Developing competence is a great way to motivate and challenge people and stop boredom setting in.
• Can you add other skills into the distribution chain to support your partners, such as sales and marketing support, providing handouts or white labelled brochures? If you don’t have these skills internally now, then is it something that you can train your people to do?
• Consider not just your technical expertise, but also the business and soft skills needed in the organisation. People management (including diversity, equality & inclusion), product development, leadership development, sales and marketing, negotiating, relationship management, service delivery, and presentation skills, are just some of the core competencies that an MGA should have within the business.
• Think ahead, but don’t take the past for granted. With advancements in technology and a new range of emerging risks already here, it’s important that you don’t get left behind or overtaken. As well as learning these new skills and competencies, it’s important that you maintain your competence in some of the fundamental skills and knowledge needed in the industry. Refresh and assess your knowledge on a regular basis. This is why CPD is so important.
• Will you satisfy the regulator? The regulator may ask you how you evidence the competence of your staff. Could you answer that question in a manner that will satisfy them? – be honest. Do you set a training budget and have a T&C framework? If not, will they see that as a risk.

If you as a business want to grow and improve, then it is vital that you continue to invest in the development and technical expertise of your people. A lot of learning can be done on the job and by working with more experienced colleagues, however this won’t provide all the answers. Providing lifelong learning motivates your staff and it builds the confidence that others have in your business.

The MGAA has partnered with Searchlight to offer its members access to training solutions at discounted rates. If you have defined a training need or would like to talk to us about supporting you with your training and competence framework, then we are here to help you. Think of us as your training department, we’d be more than happy to have a conversation and learn more about what you do.

Tom Wood

UKGI

This article was written for and published by the Managing General Agents Association (MGAA) in their quarterly magazine.