Jim's Book

15 Tackling Insurance

The Jim's franchise is usually thought of as only offering trade services, but there are some professional service divisions as well. There is Jim's Bookkeeping, Jim's Financial Services, Jim's Real Estate and Jim's Insurance.

Jim used different insurers over the years as preferred suppliers for his franchisees, negotiating the best rate possible, but still found their service lacking. The Jim's Group is large and complicated, with the different divisions and different layers of franchisees, franchisors, divisionals and National Office. ‘Other brokers just couldn't get it. There were complaints and claims weren't getting done,' Jim said.

A frantic start

In an effort to give his franchisees the best rates possible, in 2010 Jim decided to start his own insurance company by getting a broker licence and bringing it in house. A great idea, but, like many of Jim's ideas, when put into practice it proved far more challenging than he'd anticipated. Jim tried two managers, neither of whom worked out. In November 2010 Jim offered his son Andrew, who had been working as a compliance manager at National Office for the previous year, the challenge, along with the reward of a substantial amount of money if he could pull it off. It was an unfair ask of Andrew, who had no prior experience in the insurance industry. Still, Andrew dived into the role.

After obtaining a broker's licence they realised that roughly 800 franchisees lacked public liability insurance, despite ...