August 2nd, 2012
It’s not everyone who gets to sit down to an $11,000, five course dinner for 10 personally prepared by celebrity chef Hayden Wood.
But the staff of Kingaroy insurance brokers Burnett Insurance are preparing to just that some time in the next few months.
Burnett Insurance won the $11,000 dinner after the company recently took out first prize in a competition sponsored by insurance company Chartis.
They won the prize for making use of a new, automated system developed by their insurance broking network which allows members to quickly compare different features and prices on policies offered by large insurance companies.
Their broking network – Steadfast – is the largest of its kind in Australia and represents 270 independent insurance brokers nation-wide.
The group has strict membership criteria and a combined annual buying power in excess of $3.7 billion. So they command a lot of attention from large insurance companies.
This means that Steadfast network members can not only obtain better prices for insurance than ordinary consumers can, but they can also get many “Steadfast clauses” inserted into policies to provide the group’s clients with extra protection ordinary consumers can’t get either.
In a bewildering world of choice, though, selecting just the right policy for a client’s needs at the right price has become much harder over the last decade.
So new software was unveiled at the annual Streadfast conference at the Gold Coast in March to help address the problem.
At the moment, the software carries information about the policies offered by several major insurance companies, though by the end of this year it’s expected to carry informaton from most of the major insurance companies in Australia.
But to encourage brokers to start using the new software immediately, the Chartis insurance company (who are one of the first to have all their policies listed in the new system) offered an $11,000 gourmet dinner for 10 as a prize to the broking firm that made the most use of the software between March and June.
And the winner turned out to be Kingaroy’s Burnett Insurance.
“Honestly, we couldn’t be more delighted,” Chartis Broker Relationship Manager Brian Ballard said this week when he travelled up from Brisbane to present Burnett Insurance’s Gary Howes with the official prize-winning notification and a copy of Wood’s latest book “Green Food Generation”.
“Many people think that the best brokers are in capital cities and that regional brokers can’t compete on price or service,” he said.
“But we know this isn’t the case. That’s why we’re glad to see regional Australia chalk up a win.”
Mr Ballard said that Steadfast’s new software credited every broker who used it with one entry in the competition every time the software was put to through its paces.
“So this was an honest win by a company that we know has genuinely put the software to work for several months.”
Gary Howes said he was “very surprised” to win the competition and added that the business hadn’t even tried to win the prize – they just love using new technology.
“When we found the new software was speeding up our work and helping us arrive at better decisions faster, it wasn’t hard to start using it more often,” he said.
“This software has already become one of our main tools. And as more insurance companies get added into it, I think it will probably become a tool we’ll be using every day. But this prize is a very nice bonus all the same.”
So when will Hayden Wood be coming to the South Burnett?
“We haven’t decided on a firm date yet,” Gary chuckled, “but considering what this Winter’s been like for everyone I think we’d all prefer to wait until Spring.”
