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Business Development Support:

Coversure franchise holders have access to a variety of additional support services provided by Head Office.

Human Resources

Coversure provide a full Human resource support facility that includes a complete on line manual including advice on Recruitment, Induction, Job Descriptions, Competency, Appraisals and Disciplinary Procedures, all of which is supported by a large range of printable support material including sample advertisements, letters, staff manuals and appraisal documentation.

Advice and support on day to day HR issues is provided by the Human Resources team at Head Office.

Compliance

As a Coversure branch, you will be authorised in your own right by the FCA. Coversure Head Office will give you full assistance in completing the necessary applications to help facilitate a smooth authorisation process. Once authorised, Franchisees benefit from full compliance support from Head Office including:-

Compliant IT systems and customer documentation
Central Client money management
Professional Indemnity Insurance
Compliance Monitoring visits and support
Fully documented compliance manuals and procedures
Central on-line training facilities

It is our aim to alleviate the demands of compliance allowing franchisees to concentrate on their core business.

Additional Information

Additional Functions carried out by Coversure and Datamatters
How we make our money
Franchisees own a share of the Franchisor

Over the years Coversure has managed to derive income from a number of different sources and it has always been our intention to be open and honest about this aspect of our business. In addition to providing all of the products and services that franchise holders require in order to own and manage profitable businesses, Coversure Head Office, along with Datamatters, provide a wealth of additional services to insurers and other product providers.

In the accounts area Coversure Insurance Services Ltd is obliged by the insurer on all its agencies to guarantee all monies by way of corporate and directors’ personal guarantees. In addition we help to ensure that accounts are settled as completely and accurately as possible in the shortest possible time.

In association with Datamatters we are bound to submit statutory information to the MID (Motor Insurance Database) and we provide a wide range of services to Insurers including Direct Real-time System Access, up to the minute Management Information, Product Systems, EDI, Product Development and a plethora of other services. This is all available to insurers free of charge subject to an overriding commission on business placed and goes some way towards the substantial costs of maintaining our own system from which everyone at Coversure benefits. The annual cost for maintaining the Polaris run time environment alone is close to £50,000.

In addition, we have pioneered the use of data to assist with accurate pricing, giving our branches a very real edge for certain sectors. The costs of searches is borne by Coversure Head office and the development work has been funded by Coversure and DataMatters. This investment is on-going and costs have already exceeded £300,000.

Our continued investment in the pro-active development of new facilities encourages insurers to develop products with Coversure and it is only when a product is successful and is used that they have to pay anything at all for our services. The actual amount of override is highly sensitive and is not disclosed.

In the past, some insurers have negotiated very hard and forcefully and it has not been possible to secure a full override and a lower amount than initially requested has been conceded. Knowledge of the concession and to whom it has been made would be extremely detrimental to Coversure’s negotiating position with other insurers and has the potential to be financially damaging to Franchise Holders too.

In addition to the franchise fee collected by Coversure and related directly to the amount of business written, DataMatters also charge franchise holders an amount that allows them to access the system, this compares favourably with charges made by other broking system providers who will also look to persuade their clients to upgrade their systems and incur additional costs on a regular basis.

The fee charged by Datamatters includes the connection at your office, the connection to processors at DataMatters and the remote disaster recovery backup servers, the virtual private network, Zen network management facilities, the provision of processors, routers, firewalls, domains, Email provision and licences in addition to the fast internet connection.

In addition to the franchise fees and override commissions Coversure also receive an income from the Huntingdon sales branch based at Head Office which has been maintained since Mark Coverdale pioneered the franchise business in 1986. Profits earned by the sales branch are re-invested in the business and help to keep franchise fees at the lowest possible level.

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