WealthTalk hosts Christian Rodwell and Kevin Whelan are joined by insurance expert Josh Munt to unpack the crucial role insurance plays in protecting and building wealth. They explore the common mistakes property owners make, how to avoid being underinsured, and why policy wording really matters. Josh shares insider tips on working with brokers, managing risks effectively, and even lowering your premiums—without cutting corners on cover. If you own property or are on the path to wealth, this is an episode you can’t afford to miss.
In this episode, Christian Rodwell sits down with insurance expert Josh Munt to explore the often-overlooked world of insurance for property investors, business owners, and professionals. Josh shares practical tips, common pitfalls, and actionable strategies to ensure you’re properly covered—without overpaying or leaving yourself exposed.
Key Discussion Points
Final Thoughts
Insurance may not be the most exciting part of wealth-building, but as Josh explains, it’s one of the most critical. Failing to declare something or reviewing your cover too late could cost thousands. With the right advice, you can ensure you’re covered properly, avoid costly mistakes, and potentially save money in the long run. As a special bonus, Josh is offering a waived admin fee for WealthBuilders listeners who mention the podcast when they enquire.
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Speaker 2 (00:00.11)
76 % of UK buildings are underinsured and of commercial properties it's 79%. So if you're underinsured, say it's a £10,000 claim, they value the property and they look at it and go, right, well, it's 40 % underinsured. They can still deduct that percentage from that £10,000 claim. We've had over 20 years experience demystifying insurance as such because it can be that minefield and
complex tasks that you might try and put off. So we keep it as simple as possible, making sure you get the best value to make sure claims pay. At the end of the day, that's the whole point of insurance, right?
Welcome to this week's episode of Wealth Talk. name is Christian Rodwell, the membership director for WealthBuilders, joined today by our founder, Mr. Kevin Whelan. Hello, Kevin.
Chris, good to be with you again. Do you know what I love about the podcast is the rich diversity of subjects from the real things we get on a soapbox like inheritance tax to the brilliant work that Bimbi's doing. You I've been thinking about that. You you talked about the kindness principle. I've been practicing. I've been practicing instead of being a road range rascal.
I've been letting people out, you know, and I've always done that really. I paid somebody's coffee forward. It's interesting. And it happened to me once, I remember, you know how I like to go to charity shops for books and I'll take, yeah, I'll take all my books back. Some would argue I'm going to charity shops with my clothes, but I'm not. I'm going for books and I like travel books and stuff, especially where I'm going. So I was looking recently for a book because I'm going to Porto with my wife.
Speaker 1 (01:43.566)
I thought I'd have a look anyway. And I bought some books. The charity shop lady said to me, Oh, and I didn't have any cash because I'm not carrying cash anymore. The lady in the charity shop said, Oh, we, don't take cards, you know, for less than the certain amount of money. And this woman just next to me just went, I'll take care of that. I'm paying it forward. I was like, you know, I remember this was a thing, wasn't it? A while ago. But anyway, talking about that, the all pervasive thing is.
We've got to talk about some things which are essential, but perhaps not as exciting as other things. You know, we say in well-talked to educate, inform, and hopefully entertain. Probably not going to entertain you today.
but we could save you some money.
But, you know, it's well, it's not just about saving money, although saving money is an important consideration and everything, particularly if it's recurring money. So we are going to talk today a little about insurance and the need to pay attention because while it's an important part of the very foundation of what we do in debits, isn't it? The debt, education bills, insurance, tax and stock market fees.
You know, insurance is such an integral part of a wealth building life, but we thought we'd ask one of our hub members. Do you want to explain what the hub is Chris to our listeners?
Speaker 3 (03:11.246)
Yeah, well, we all know about these little black books that people build up and you've got a pretty extensive black book of industry contacts, Kevin, and what we've done is really kind of transferred that to an online digital platform, which our members get access to. So for anyone that you might need along your wealth building journey, any kind of professional service, be that mortgage brokers, solicitors, accountants, legal, educators, you know, the list goes on so many categories. So that's the Wealth Hub.
You know, the whole idea of having experts is think about WealthBuilders with an analogy I like that WealthBuilders are kind of like a financial GP. And we know a lot about tax, legal, financial, structural things. You know, as you say, many, many categories that you need to touch on when you're building wealth. you know, insurance just happens to be one of those and you can't be an expert in all types. You just can't be because there's multiple types of insurance, but we thought.
One of our members doing a good job on property is properties are probably one of the most popular assets. And he gives an insight into some of the tips to avoid not thinking you've got insurance when you haven't, because you've actually not really done a good job. You've tried to skimp or even kind of, you know, half insure when you should properly insure all that kind of thing. So yeah, I it would be an interesting insight.
I think he shares those pretty well.
Indeed. our guest today is Josh Munt. He's the operations director at Insurance Desk and he's going to be sharing a few top tips and some do's and don'ts on the topic of insurance. So we'll head on to our conversation with Josh now and then Kevin, you and I will be back afterwards with our debrief. Josh, welcome to Wealth Talk today. How are you?
Speaker 2 (04:59.98)
Very good, thanks Christian. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Yeah, no, great. And we're to talk about insurance today, right? So something that we all need in our lives. And you're going to tell us a little bit about who you work with, which I think primarily is probably probably investors, business owners, is that right?
Yeah, that's the core avatar, very centered around property professionals. We do lots of different commercial products, but properties are the core.
Sure, tell us a bit about your desk and your involvement.
Yes, we are specialist insurance broker, mainly looking at commercial and property professionals. And within the world of property, there's a whole different manner of ways you could structure your portfolios and strategies. So we offer tailored cover, designed for each individual business. We've had over 20 years experience demystifying insurance as such, because it can be that minefield and complex tasks that you might try and put off. we...
Speaker 2 (05:53.71)
We keep it as simple as possible, making sure you get the best value to make sure claims pay. At the end of the day, that's the whole point of insurance, right?
Yeah, and we know that insurance companies, they'll do anything they can, right, to try and not pay out.
Unfortunately, they will. know the sort of the view of an insurance professional may be down there with a politician if I'm being kind maybe, but I think there's a lots of things that contribute towards that, whether it be not insuring correctly, not understanding it correctly. But equally, yes, there are times where insurers will look at not paying. So it's really important to...
Get everything, all your ducks in our own, make sure there's no wiggle room so they have to pay up.
Brilliant. Well, hopefully we can go through as many of those kind of areas, I suppose, that people maybe sometimes overlook or don't quite fully understand. So let's start with, what are some of the most common mistakes that you see amongst your clients?
Speaker 2 (06:53.25)
Yeah, I think we've mentioned before, Christian, it's not the most sexiest of topics, it? So today's more about keeping it fairly light. Don't need to go into too much depth about how insurance policies work, but really highlighting some simple tips that could help save businesses hundreds of thousands sometimes. And one of those most common mistakes is around rebuild values. So when we're talking about property, we're ensuring the bricks are mortar.
And what you're insuring it for is the cost to put it back to how it was for a claim. So that involves all the construction costs and then all the professional fees and the associated removal of debris with a total loss. So that all comes together with the reinstatement or rebuild value. Now there was a study done 2024 that 76 % of UK buildings are underinsured.
76 % and of commercial properties, it's 79%. So that is a huge amount of properties that are undervalued for insurance. And within that 79%, there's about 60 to 65 % of the true value of under insurance. So that means that nearly 60 % of those rebuild values are under. So you're looking at a shortfall of 40 % claim. So the implications are
on the total loss, then yeah, you could be in having to front that 40 % yourself, but it's not only on total losses. It's applied to every single claim. So if you're underinsured, a loss adjuster say it's a 10,000 pound claim, they value the property and they look at it and go, right, well, it's 40 % underinsured. They can still deduct that percentage from that 10,000 pound claim. So you can see how quickly this can become a big issue.
And it can be the one thing that costs you lots and lots of money.
Speaker 3 (08:51.0)
So I'm guessing a lot of people, assume is market value. That's the figure that they put down.
That's the common mistake. Yeah. Market value or they'll, you know, they'll have spoke to someone who recommends that they know a builder who says it's X amount. And well, they'll just pluck a figure out the air and just go, right, I think it's about half a million. Let's insure it for that. And probably the biggest catalyst was, was COVID. And then mix that in with a whole manner of different geopolitical problems and events that have gone on since then rebuilds from COVID.
shot up about 30 % on year on year, and then it stayed at another 20, then another 15, then another 10. And it has actually come back down now to about one and a half, 2 % increase on that rebuild index linking every year. So if you've not, if you've kept it at the same amount as five years ago, where you could be looking at a massive percentage, so it's always worth looking at those values every year. Now, commercial property, there's no real free tools.
So that's not very helpful, I know, but there are some cost-effective tools. You can get e-valuations that can be charged with say a 115 pound plus VAT. So they will be able to give you true rebuild value for a low cost. So you don't then have to guess.
residential property. know you've got the RICS website and there's probably a few other places where you can go and get a rebuild. How reliable are those?
Speaker 2 (10:20.046)
The residential ones, they're pretty reliable for all the bog standard properties whereby there's no non-standard elements to it. It's not grade listed. It's of a certain footprint. Those will be using the same calculations that loss adjusters will be using as well. if you've got one of those reports, you can feel pretty comfortable. It's insured correctly and it is free. If it is too big or there's any quirkiness on non-standard to it or like I've said, commercial, the only way is to get
a RICS qualified valuation so you can pay for those. But if you've got a lender or you've got any finance, then sometimes they will actually tell you what you need to insure it for. And that is then a great free way of, I you have to pay probably for the survey, but a free insurance rebuild way to find the rebuild value.
I suppose this leads on to, in some cases, people trying to, I suppose, cut back, skimp a little bit so that they get their premiums as low as possible. But by doing that, you might be saving a few quid. But if you need to claim, obviously, it's really not worth doing that, is it?
Now, I think there was a study that said that with car insurance, the average change is about 12 times before someone buys. So they'll tweak their mileage or they'll change something on the additional drivers to work the premium down. So I think the focus with insurance has always been premium. And I do understand it at the end of the day, it's not a purchase, it's a necessity. It's not something that you are receiving something back for or actually don't want to get.
anything back for you hope you don't need it, right? So it's trying to change that mentality. It is about premium. Yeah. If you want to ensure the lowest possible price, but you want to find your most adequate cover that covers you first and then look at finding the cheapest price from there. I think maybe it's because people don't understand what they're buying or don't really know what to look for. I think once you establish your risks and understand what you're ensuring, then it's about.
Speaker 2 (12:24.928)
about price because you're right, if you start tweaking things and taking things off that you have no idea, how do you know when something happens that you can't foresee that it's covered properly? So yeah, really important to understand what you're trying to cover and what really is important to you.
Maybe we'll come back to that in a minute. You can tell us a few more tips on how to reduce insurance costs, I'm sure there's a few more mistakes that you see out there. What about like tenant type? Does that have any impact at all?
Yeah, I mean, if we're keeping the topic around property tenant types is another key, key path where claims can fail. There is no blanket policy per se. can't cover a working tenant or say a cafe from day one, and then it changes to a restaurant midterm or your working tenant leaves and you replace it and go down a social housing route. You know, they're very different risks, very different risk profiles for an insurer. So then you do have to notify that change.
And I think that that's another part where people will forget that can lead to claims being repudiated, i.e. declined in its entirety and then they'll cancel cover. So you have a real big problem without disclosing the correct tenant types.
Okay, so two really good tips so far, the rebuild value, the tenant type. You got one more for us?
Speaker 2 (13:43.754)
One more is all about policy conditions. I mean, I always say, well, I talk to people on podcasts, property meets, I'm sort of doing an insurance talk to is how many people read a policy wording? There can't be many. And I mean, I must confess, I won't go through my own insurance policy wordings from page one to page 96. Luckily, I know what I'm looking for. But if you don't, then how on earth do you know what that means?
So think a good tip is to find a section that says endorsements or conditions, and they're usually around one or two pages, maybe slightly longer, depending on the risk. And there'll be things that you have to do. So if you're looking at property, a lot of conditions come to play when you're talking unoccupied. It could be inspections, removal of waste, sure alarm, alarms are making sure that you're doing your part of the contract.
So that when a claim happens, you can say, well, look, I have been doing this, therefore, insurer will look to pay out. If you don't do them, then sometimes they are precedent to the whole policy. So you would then need to make sure you are doing them for a claim to pay out. So policy conditions or endorsements, that's the sort of section you want to be looking for when you get your documents.
I guess these are some of the benefits of working directly with a company like yourself, Josh, compared to sort of a comparison website online where, know, obviously they're very popular these days, where people conveniently can sort of get quotes from many places. What are some of the benefits of working with you?
Yeah, we will tailor policies for that specific risk. So the advantage is you could talk to us and say, look, this is what I have happening. We can structure an insurance program to fit that rather than having a long list of questions that you have to answer to try and make it fit. So that's definitely the one key part of using a broker. We can tailor policies. They're not one policy fits all. Also, depending on the broker,
Speaker 2 (15:52.632)
got a wide market reach. So one policy that say might fit in a Viva, the next one might go somewhere else. And there's lots of options. So you can feel probably more comfortable that your risk is under one roof. So you can have multiple properties. You could also start to ensure your business, lots of other requirements that you fit within one brokerage. But the most important thing I think is claims assistance.
You go on, go compare and nothing against them. They have a purpose, but you are on your own. So if you have claims, you are dealing direct with insurers and they can be really challenging.
Yes, we've all had those challenging moments. We've talked a lot about properties, but if you're a more traditional business owner, what are some of the do's and don'ts, the things to be aware of, Josh?
Also, it's about sums insured for business owners. think that's really key. We talked a bit about rebuilds for property. Now that can be the same for business owners that have manufacturing, factories, manufacturing plants, all different types of buildings and dwellings they operate from. So if they own them, they can insure those buildings. I think the most important thing for businesses is protecting the income, protecting that.
that gross profit, that net profit that everybody's working for. So a good example is a factory. If there is a fire in that factory, where and how long is it going to take before you can get that revenue back to where it was? So it's really making sure you've got the right covers to protect the profits and the revenue. And then you've got lots of different eventualities such as your liabilities, damage to third party property or death.
Speaker 2 (17:40.546)
terrorism, legal expenses, and lots of extra add-ons that you will look to bolt on. I think for businesses, it's looking at worst case scenario, all the eventualities, what would happen? What are the repercussions if this event happens? How is that going to impact me? And then you want to start working out what you're insuring for from there.
with that also apply to perhaps someone who's earlier stage in their business, their self-employed, maybe solopreneur. Are there any particular policies or suggestions for someone who perhaps hasn't yet built out a big team?
Yeah, there's still some fundamentals there, regardless of if you've got a team or if it is just, you know, the sole trader, that one person that it does depend on the trade. So lots of different trades. If you're looking at something like an e-commerce business and most of the profits and revenues driven through online sales and cyber is going to be one of your most important things you should think about. It's so important.
It seems to me that you look at the news, another business, large business has been hacked. know, there's lots lately that have been in the spotlight for being hacked. think, well, how they're humongous. And those businesses actually have a buffer. They have some form of resource to protect themselves, even with insurance. The SME and the sole trader, probably not. There's no pot to dip into. So if you have a really bad attack, you're going to need some help. So cyber.
So then if you flip that around, you're looking at a very manual business like a electrician, a plumber, anyone with hands on, then liability, still that physical element is really key. So you're going to really look to make sure you're covering public liability properly, legal expenses, and all those things that then come with running a manual business. Professional indemnity, another one, again, I won't go into it too much, but it applies to then those...
Speaker 2 (19:43.694)
those service led businesses that offer advice and more of service to clients. So if they fell in those, again, they're covering their financial losses. As you can see, they're me rambling all about lots of different trades. Every trade probably is different and the covers of importance change. So it's really important, think, and biased, to talk to a professional to structure it properly.
Yeah, and I guess it's awareness, isn't it? I mean, you don't know what you should be covering yourself for necessarily. You don't know what kinds of protection exists out there. So, you know, for anyone listening now who is either a business owner or a property investor, they can reach out to you, Josh, right? And I'm sure you'd be happy to kind of guide them, give them some help.
Yeah, absolutely. Anyone through WealthBuilders or anyone in general, if they want to have a chat or have something upcoming they need to have some advice on, then there's a no obligation conversation to be had. We're not going to tie you in to say, you have to pay us some money before we quote. Okay. It would be nice if everyone converts, but we're there to talk. think one key thing for me is, like I said, at the very start is demystifying it, really getting you the correct cover.
So when the worst happens, you can breathe easy, you can get your contributions from your insurer and then you can crack on again. So there's definitely reach out.
Yeah. And also you very kindly offered any listeners of Wealth Talk. If they do get in touch, they want to speak and mention they're from WealthBuilders, then you'll remove your admin fee as well.
Speaker 2 (21:22.902)
Yeah, so just mention that you've gone through wealth builder so we can apply the discounts.
Amazing. Thanks so much for that.
Yeah, no, absolutely. It's good to help your listeners. And I know lots of it's structured around SSAS and pension. So a lot of it will be commercial property there as well. So we have different products to give different covers. So I with SSAS you want to be looking at very extensive covers. So they're all available as well.
Don't want let you go yet, Josh. Still some more questions. Let's get back to how can, obviously we don't want to pay more than we need to when it comes to insurance. Have you got any additional tips for how we can reduce our insurance premiums?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we talk a lot about risk and the importance of understanding what your risk is. You then transfer that off into an insurance policy. That's equally important when trying to save money, because if you understand what your risk is and what you can self-contribute, i.e. you know something can happen, you've got a pot of reserves to pay for that, well, don't insure it. Self-insure it.
Speaker 2 (22:32.142)
then your premiums will come down. And that could be an example, say property insurance, extra bolt-ons, legal expenses, accidental damage, loss of rent, extending the months. You can start to strip all these covers back if you're very comfortable with knowing what you're doing, because your premiums will then come down. And with that, excesses are a great tool. A lot of excesses are just standard. They'll be 250.
some are even a hundred. But if you're someone that is more comfortable with risk and you're not going to claim for all those small losses, say anything sub 2,500, even bigger, you might say, look, anything below 5K, I'm not worried. I'm just going to cover that myself. We'll put your excess at 5K. That's going to get your premiums really lower compared to a hundred pound excess. So that's a really good tool there. And I think from just being in property insurance for so long and
seeing how people structure it. think a lot of people still have individual policies and they might be large portfolios, but all singly insured. Well, not only is that an admin headache, you're going to be saving lots of money when you bundle them together. If you've got lots more buying power, you have one policy word in and you have one renewal date. So the advantages are really big to bundle risks. So that's definitely my top tip.
Is there anything we've not covered? don't want to miss out anything, any golden nuggets that listeners could benefit from.
The biggest one is, I'm an advocate for cover and you think, he's an insurance broker. He's going to say it he can charge more. If we can get that premium conception out, look at the cover, then go for premium. we do get the best premium we possibly can for the cover. Then you can start to see a lot more claims be paid. I mean, some great examples of where we've had
Speaker 2 (24:32.558)
clients and unoccupied property especially look at a very minimalistic cover, pretty much a fire only policy. By spending about 200 pounds more, they've saved 20, 30,000 by just adding that extra cover in. It's wreaked the rewards. And I guess when you have that payout, you don't remember the time when you took the policy out.
But if you did, you might think, wow, I'm so glad I did that. But flip it around when you fail to do something, you're the first to beat yourself up. Why didn't they do that? Why didn't I pay that? you know, to try and preempt that happening and, and, look at cover, just really look at, at making sure you're covered correctly because it's pointless otherwise.
or worse, not having anything at all, right? And I'm sure you've got some horror stories of people who have left it or they've let it lapse and it's run out.
Worst case when you've paid for something and you think you've got something and then you go to claim it doesn't pay out because you potentially didn't follow one of the policy conditions or, this is how minute the detail needs to be. It's so small that it can have such a big impact. Flat roofs. So if you had a hundred percent flat roof, well, some insurers actually don't want to do that at all. So if you just go standard construction, yeah, but it's felt on timber.
Well, there's the potential that they're not going to pay any claim. So we've seen some horror stuff for such small things. So I can't, I can't shout enough about declaring everything as well. Just say, look, this is what we've got, you know, get me the best policy.
Speaker 3 (26:16.428)
Well, I think you've reinforced today the importance of not trying to cut back and make sure you've got adequate cover and the benefits of speaking to someone like yourself, Josh. I'm sure our listeners now, it's a very personal thing, isn't it, insurance? You have to know the personal needs of that person, that business, that property portfolio. yeah, if people do want to get in touch, Josh, we'll obviously share all the links, but just let people know the website address or a direct way to get in touch.
Yeah, make sure you say WealthBuilders when you come through, you can call us on 01296 329610. You can find us lots of ways for emails at infoappinsurance-desk.com. If you visit our website, there's lots of different information on there and that's www.insurance-desk.com. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. So if you want to reach out, I'm on there and drop me a DM.
All right. Thanks so much for sharing with us today, Josh.
Yeah, pleasure. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 3 (27:19.47)
Okay, thanks for Josh doing his best there to liven up the topic of insurance. And I'm sure there'll be a few points that we can discuss, Kevin, before we do that. It's been a few weeks since we headed over to Trustpilot. So I'd love to do that. And obviously we love sharing the reviews that we get from our members. And we've had one in from Ezekiel who said, WealthBuilders and particularly Paul Brooks have been fantastic in helping us understand how to utilize our SSAS pension. This has allowed us to purchase our first commercial property.
for business use as an owner-occupier and renting out the extra space to generate additional revenue.
And for those who don't know, Paul Brooks is, doesn't normally appear on the podcast very much. We've got to keep him under wraps, keep him at his desk, keep him chained there, though he runs our SSAS program. In fact, looks after our partners in our hub that we mentioned earlier on. So good for Paul, getting a good mention.
The topic of insurance, I know Kevin, we've talked on previous podcasts about we don't need to insure everything. Maybe you just want to expand on that point for our listeners.
Well, I think there's a general principle of insurance, which is not anything other than the purpose of insurance is to bridge a gap. Right? So this is where, you know, which way you are, it's where you want to be. That's one gap. And the other one is this is a consequence of something going wrong. There's a gap. So whether you're building wealth or whether you're assessing risk, you have to look at that gap.
Speaker 1 (28:52.774)
And the real skill is not to fudge it, but to properly assess it because I call that awareness. And the principle of awareness is if you are fully knowledgeable, fully informed about just something you happen to be paying attention to on your wealth journey. let's say insurance is one of those things. Then by really understanding
The full picture, how you feel about it comes next. So in other words, you understand the risk and then once you understand the risk, because insurance is all about risk and there's no such thing as a risk-free anything. There's no risk-free pillar. There's no risk-free investment. There's no risk-free relationship. There's no risk-free anything. So given that life is not free of risk, we need awareness.
to determine our reaction to the risk. Right? So once you understand the risk, you look at it and say, okay, I understand the risk. Right. For example, I mean, there are some risks you have to legally cover. Right? So you've got to legally cover driving a car because you're putting others at risk. It's not your risk that's being considered. That's the reason for that. But for example, you know, I live in a mortgage free house.
So I could live in my home and I could choose to go, well, all right. You know, I've done all my, you know, I've got my smoke detectors up, I've got everything. I could make the decision to not insure my house, couldn't I? I could assess the risk and say, well, you know, if it burned down, you what's it worth X? If it burned down, what would it, you could I afford to rebuild it? And I assessed the risk.
And then when look at the risk, I've got basically three choices. Accept the risk and do nothing.
Speaker 1 (31:01.506)
Think about the risk and fully cover it.
Think about the risk and partially cover it. The problem is Josh said with property, you can't partially cover because if you partially cover, you'll be denying the risk. So you've got to look at that and say, well, actually I have to cover the whole rebuilding, not the risk of, if it costs me a million quid to rebuild, but I've got X in the bank, I can afford a small, no. You've got to ensure a building.
for the whole thing. So this is where property becomes really quite important to understand how that risk is being dealt with if you ever come to claim. But generally speaking, except the risk of death. Okay. So if you, if you look at the risk of death, you can say, where am I on my wealth building journey? Am I at the beginning of it so that I want my family to be wealthy? Should I not be around to be able to provide the wherewithal?
The time, skill, the money and the application board do that. So I want them to be free of risk. I want a mortgage to be paid if I had a mortgage and I want an income coming to my family almost to replace the wealth plan. If I'm at the beginning, the need for that insurance, at least technically could be higher. And when you're wealthy, you don't need that anymore because you've got all the income you need. You don't need to.
to replace the wealth plan because you've achieved the wealth. See what saying? So you purposefully and with intention have to look at insurance as part of life. lots of things in life are that paying taxes and paying insurance are pretty dreary. Nobody wants to do it. But you've got to put that one hour, if that's the time you're giving yourself, to look at the insurance of a particular thing and take care of it. And I think Josh made
Speaker 1 (33:01.688)
couple of good tips, particularly I like the one of the portfolio insurance. And this idea of portfolio insurance really is not really very dissimilar to something I'm working on in a minute, Chris, told you about this, but then I do some things in the background on my own. You know, we're talking about this whole idea of the family wealth fortress, this concept of a fully protected family.
for intergenerational wealth, not just protected now, but protected to the next generation and the next generation.
Part of this issue I've got in my head with the family is there are so many things you can do to do things in blocks. So just as you can buy a block of apartments and you can earn more money from the block than the single unit costs you less per individual unit. But did you know that you can have blocks of family savings? So if you've got savings in a family, you can get a better rate by combining
at least notionally, all of the savings. Or if you've got some form of block investing, you can get a cost to manage the money, excuse me, with a provider. If you choose a cheap provider, one that's giving you access to the investments you want at a low cost, that investment could work for you, could work for your up generation, could work for your down generation. you see what I mean?
stretch the block.
Speaker 1 (34:40.952)
From savings to investing, SSAS is a perfect example of a block. It's a family asset, isn't it? You join, your family joins with you so that you can reduce the cost, improve the possibility of returns, improve the possibility of reducing your inheritance tax. So very clever things that insurance will often give you another way to look at something like the block policy.
The other way that I like to look at insurance is first of all, to think about influence. If you're defaulting your money, let's say you default your money, you invest it, you delegate it. You're not really paying attention to the returns, but if you get involved and then you can influence that return, you can run a comparable. You can say, right, if I was in the stock market getting 6%, but I'm doing this, I'm learning options.
I'm creating a recurring income as well and I'm getting eight. I can use some of the 2%, the arbitrage, the benefit, the gain and use that to ensure your risk. The risk of losing money through a stop loss, the risk of inheritance tax by taking some of the gains you're making on your overall wealth strategy and using that to ensure the risk of the month, the payment of the inheritance tax, because you know the
You can already quantify the risk because you do the calculation. insurance is one of those things that you can do in blocks. So I thought rather than just talk about insurance, because you know, that could be, as we say, like tax, relatively uninspiring, but the whole principle of understanding risk, awareness being the very start of everything, then you can make a decision about you do nothing, do something or do everything. Then start looking at risk in blocks.
if you can block risk, your cash, block returns are investing, block returns in your SSAS, you're starting to think like a family and a family wealth fortress.
Speaker 3 (36:50.946)
that. Yeah, no, some very clever points there indeed. Is there a risk sometimes with people that they can, dare I say, get a bit lazy with their insurances? And Josh talked about the last five years, rebuild costs in terms of labor, in terms of materials, really has rocketed. And if you're just renewing every year and you're not really paying attention, easy to just keep ticking the same boxes and not really look into that kind of thing and potentially there, find out should you need to claim?
that you're massively, you know, kind of out on your numbers.
That's a good point and I think it's probably true that almost every form of insurance needs to be reviewed from time to time. So just as it's important to review your wills and things like that, it's all part of your roof. Your risk largely is part of your roof as well. You look at that and you definitely look at your cost of rebuild. You definitely want to look at another one that I see people get a bit lazy on. Well, I think Josh says who reads a policy document and don't always read the policy document, Chris.
scan, read it, and then gets a bit boring after a while. But you know, you got to look at that and you made a good point about definitely reading the exceptions and the exclusions and all that. But the other point about insurance that I see people make mistakes of is the randomness when it comes to something like life insurance. Right? So when, when our team talked to people about the risks they're taking, say, well, what life cover have you got? And they say, I've got a hundred grand. How did you arrive at that?
Don't know it's a round number. Okay. Well, lots of round numbers doesn't mean it's the right number. So if you've got live cover, purposefully review it with somebody and we've got members of our hub, can put you in contact with to review that, but review things with intention. And that's the best way to do it. Then you've done it once and then just do it once every year or once every three years or once every period when it comes to things like.
Speaker 1 (38:52.546)
reassessing your life cover and what you need because five years down the line, you're completely wealthy. You don't need your insurance at all. So you don't need it. might want to keep it, but you don't need it. So yeah, lots of good reasons why people should, but invariably they don't, which is why having a good review with somebody, a good broker, a good broker is always good to have in your bag because brokers shop around, brokers know what's changing. A good broker will save you money.
cost you money. And it's always nice if we've negotiated a little bit of a benefit for our members, which says no admin fee. And almost all of our hub partners, we've negotiated something on behalf of our members, haven't we? So good to make use of what we do as well. And good people like moneysavingspert.com, all of that. They will often have some hints and tips on insurance. So definitely a website worth going to if you haven't been there in a while.
What I'll do is also link to our Debits podcast where we talk about doing a review every year or so on the debt, the education costs, the bills, insurance, taxes, and stock market fees. All of that is very valid, but of course, focusing on the eye today for insurance. We hope you did get some top tips and we hope this causes you just to take note of the current insurances that you have and perhaps even some that you don't have that you might now go and contact Josh and have a chat. All right then.
Okay, very good.
Good. Well, as always, if you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend and Kevin, you and I will be back same time, same place next week.
Speaker 1 (40:30.648)
We will indeed my friend until then see ya
Speaker 2 (40:36.686)
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