What recommendation are needed to start a insurance company or insurance broker?
I'm not sure if this helps but this article consultation about individual a virtual insurance agent/broker. If you want to work from home. You do need a license. Its interesing how bright tech has changed the road we will conduct our life. I agree totally next to Ray. Good answer.
To start with you own to be registered at LLoyds of London, and prove you have the crucial finances to operate as an Insurer or broker. The registration is very expensive, because adjectives your dealings will be underwritten by LLoyds. You also own to show you are competent in dealing next to insurance risks, and a lot more. References are needed which are followed up. This is to ensure that the public are guarded against any hasty rich merchants who will take adjectives the premium cash and later do a runner. Ray's answer is excellent. The only entry I would add to it is that the FSA will call for to see that you have appropriate professional indemnity insurance contained by place along side the other requirements (experience / qualification / capitalisation / processes.)
If you have a website that collects customer information (rather than simply a "brochureware - phone us"-type site, you may also be required to demonstrate its technical aptitude. We had to demonstrate our payment, scalability and disaster-recovery testing results to the FSA as module of our registration.
When we started up, we hired someone with 20 years experience to be our Compliance Director AND hired a Finance Director who be also FSA registered.
The two of them took the company, and us as Directors, through the registration process, which took several months.
Answers: I’m afraid to say the above answer on the subject of Lloyd’s is TOTALLY INCORRECT, ignore it completely.
For a company:
Lloyd's have nothing to do beside setting up an Insurance company, at all... nada...never have..never will.
The biggest qualification for starting an inurance company is lots of cash. unless you own millions sitting around, forget it.it isn't going to happen. In the UK or any EU country you'll entail better than Eur 3.5m 'free assets' as an absolute lawful minimum. If you have smaller amount than 10m, frankly I wouldn't even bother asking and even that is low.
For a Broker:
You DO NOT enjoy to become a registered Lloyds broker unless you want to do business DIRECTLY with a Lloyd’s syndicate (there are ways round this) and even that requirement is imagined to disappear soon under recent senate proposals to reform the Lloyd’s Act 1982.
In the meantime near are plenty of companies happy to quote for your business.
Please pay no attention to all that Lloyd’s stuff, it’s incorrect and/or irrelevant, here are plenty of small brokers in the UK who aren’t Lloyd’s registered.
It’s difficult to present you a precise answer as the rules vary depending on what sort of insurance you want to put up for sale, where, how and to whom. (e.g. the rules and requirement for Life business are massively different to those on say Travel Insurance)
What you absolutely will need is to be licenced by the FSA, the join below takes you to their application guidance brochure which pretty much tell you all you have need of to know. I’ve found the FSA to be reasonably nifty (though they won’t tell you how to do something, simply that you need to do it)
Far more central than any formal qualifications is the inevitability to comply with a full host of rules and regulations.
You’ll need to comply next to rules covering selling the policy, accounting for it, banking it, dealing near claims etc etc etc … trust me it goes on and on.
You will requirement to satisfy the FSA that you will know how to do this, though as a ‘small firm’ the requirements are less than for a big outfit.
There will also be dependable minimum capital requirements, again how much depends hugely much on the type and amount of business.
Failure to comply is VERY serious and could see you heavily fined even if it was an honest mistake, truism “sorry I didn’t realise”, won’t cut much ice. (There are lots of examples of fines individual issued on the FSA website).
Failure to register is an even more serious criminal offence and can see you doing secure unit time…. don’t risk it….. and anyway it’s also an FSA requirement that Insurers check that the brokers they deal near are FSA registered, so no-one in the UK will do business near you if you’re not.
You could always hire a qualified compliance officer or firm to look after adjectives this for you, (I’ve known even some VERY immense firms to do this for certain specific reasons), but logically that costs money.
If you want to get qualified yourself, The Chartered Insurance Institute (link below) is probably the best recognised outfit, they do a choice of different qualifications, tailored to adjectives sorts of needs including Insurance Broking. The FSA will recognise CII diploma.
There are other ways you could start up in the business minus all this hassle, you might want to speak to some of the bigger brokers and/or insurers just about some kind of representative or agency matter. OK you won’t make as much money, but you’ll still be ‘pretty much’ your own boss and enjoy a lot smaller number compliance hassle as they have their own processes (and licence) within place. I could be wrong here, but for the price of a few emails, you could always ask, outstandingly if you think you’ve identified a product/market. You could also approach an established small broker locally and size them up concerning some sort of ‘partnership’ perhaps.
Hope that help a bit.