the risk store - the life risk knowledge & ideas store for financial planning professionals

About Laing Advisory

Laing Advisory was formed in 2000 as a consulting firm providing expertise and practical input into projects in the distribution ‘space’ of financial services and in areas associated with the life risk insurance education of advisers. The background is further described in Who Are We?

Clients
Laing Advisory’s clients have included:

Institutions: AIG, Asteron, Aviva, AXA, BT Life, Citigroup, Commonwealth Bank, ING, IOOF, National Bank/MLC, Suncorp, Tower, Zurich

Licensee businesses: Associated Planners (now Genesys), Hillross, ipac, financial services partners, Bridges, Lonsdale, Centrestone (now Centric), Retireinvest, Pivotal, Guild, St George, Financial Planning and Life, Financial Lifestyle Solutions and many boutique planning firms.

Education and other providers: Securities Institute, Tribeca (now Kaplan), Coin.

The projects undertaken over the last eight years have been many and varied. To assist financial services providers to match their needs to the expertise offered by Laing Advisory, some of the projects are described here – for more information, talk to us about your organisation’s needs.

The design, construction and implementation of a ‘virtual’ educational institution for a prominent Sydney-based licensee business; this has now been successfully providing compliance-related training as well as business development training to their 200+ advisers for 5 years.
Mediation and facilitation between a large national general insurance advisory network, and a national investment and insurance distribution network, to reach a workable and profitable, client-focused strategic alliance for the purposes of optimising the client relationships existing in the general network and cross-marketing the client bases.
Design of a new licensee operational and strategic infrastructure, aimed at supporting the building of a team of ‘independent’ advisers, as a new strategic direction for a major commercial bank.
Assisting with the strategic business case for the launching of a new funds-manager-owned licensee group.
Facilitating the yearly business operational and growth management plan for a major industry organisation providing distribution services. This entailed dealing in turn with 9 business divisions, across 50 staff, then bringing together all divisional issues to a final result, with the senior management team.
Redesign of the marketing strategies and material for a small boutique licensee with a specific target market.
Advising on and facilitating major operational changes for a boutique life brokerage.
Review of available life insurance research/modelling software, and detailed examination of the short-listed candidate software for a national licensee business to select a new software platform.
Project management of the preparation of proofs and applications for ten institutional Australian Financial Services Licences, under the original detailed application regime. This included assisting the businesses in the necessary development of more robust and embedded practices, policies and procedures to support the new licensing obligations, and educating the business and staff on the new regulations.
Board report review of the risk insurance implementation strategy of a large and well-known AFS licensee needing to incorporate risk into a traditional investment advice-based business. This project was followed 12 months later by building the new inhouse risk division over several months in conjunction with the line managers involved.
Workshopping the integration of risk insurance specialists into several financial planning practices, with practice staff and advisers.
Facilitating the adaptation of infrastructure of several financial planning practices to enable them to deliver robust life risk insurance advice to their clients as a new or revamped service.
Building an adviser presentation for Business Development Managers to use in the field to boost sales of risk for a large manufacturer. This included full scripting and tools for the advisers to use.
Writing and delivery of several self-paced training modules on life risk insurance for the Business Development Manager teams within a large institutional distribution business.
Full content and operational review of a major software platform provider’s new life risk module; recommendations for finalising the module to deliver to market; building delivery and training tools.
Preparation of the business case for the development of an expanded financial planning offering, by the wealth management division of an international bank.
Facilitating the development of a framework for selection of preferred life risk carriers for a large licensee business; assisting with the measurable analysis of the tenders and presentations by the insurer candidates.

Needing some temporary expertise? Want an objective view on an inhouse project? Talk to us at Laing Advisory!

Read about our Consulting and Training services.

Go back to Who Are We?