Behind the Brand: Insights from the Head of Franchise at Concept Claims Solutions

You can read the full interview transcription with Rebecca Dean, Head of Franchise at Concept Claims Solutions :

My name’s Rebecca Dean and I’m the Head of Franchise at Concept Claim Solutions.

Explain the Concept Claims Solutions opportutnity and what makes it unique

Concept Claim Solutions, in terms of the opportunity, it’s project management of insurance claims, home insurance claims, and commercial property insurance claims. And it’s a service where you really get to make a difference and you’ve got to have a passion for wanting to help people. It’s not the easiest business because you’ve got to be very, very tenacious, have a lot of persistence, And you’ve really got to care about wanting to get a good outcome for your customer because you are going to come up against some quite challenging insurance companies.

What support & training do you offer franchisees to help them set up for success?

In terms of the training and support,** it starts with five days at head office** where it’s all theory-based, classroom, really going through all the basics of using the CRM system, meetings with loss adjusters. The next stage is then time with an existing franchisee, which we call your mentor, and that programmes for six months. You spend a minimum of five days with that person, but they’re also on hand to give you that peer-to-peer support.

In addition to that, every claim you do, you’re going to get the claims team that will review it from an insurance perspective to help you understand the terms and conditions, financial ombudsman’s rulings. You’ll then meet with the operations manager who’s going to take you through understanding how to put together a schedule of works. You’re never on your own and you don’t have to be an expert in understanding construction or insurance.

What you do need is great customer service skills. For business development, again, we do a launch plan, but some territories might be crazy busy from day one. Other territories might take a lot harder work. So each week you’d have a catch up where we review progress and make sure that you’ve got enough work in your pipeline, as well as focusing on what you’re currently working on. The support’s ongoing. It’s as much as you need to get you to a place where you feel fully confident but also that you’ve got the competencies to be able to grow the business.

How do you stay adaptable to market shifts and foster innovation to create revenue streams?

A big part of it is the franchisee’s ability to negotiate with the insurance company and that’s really taking the time to put together a detailed schedule of works and some of the ways that you can help get additional margins and what we recommend people do is you can get involved in doing things like drying, leak detection, other types of the claim, so business interruption as well. So there is lots of additional revenue streams so that you don’t necessarily have to expand into another territory. There’s lots of ways to make more from your existing territory.

A lot of people who join us tend to join as one man band or lady on their own. But in reality, you know, after six to 12 months, quite a lot of them expand and get additional revenue by just employing somebody. to do a lot of those administrative tasks so that they can increase the amount of claims that they’re managing. Because like most businesses, when you’re on your own, you will get to around that half a million mark where unless you’re looking at employing somebody, unless you’re working ridiculous hours, you are going to cap out.

So expansion can be achieved either by growing your team or looking at how you can get extra margin from every single case that you manage. And it’s all done. So it’s all very, transparent, ethical. We’re not about inflating claims. It’s about just understanding how you can work smarter on each project to get that maximum return.

How will you maintain good relationships with your franchisees?

It’s all to do with communication. Nobody likes surprises. So we always say, you know, we always try and involve them as part of any changes. We have network meetings on a monthly basis. We don’t make them mandatory. So if you join in the network meeting, you absolutely know what’s going on. But again, we do have individuals who choose not to join those. So they might use the intranet, email communications, newsletters.

And we also have different focus groups as well. So if you’ve got a passion for wanting to improve our marketing, wanting to look at how we do, you know, explore new revenue streams, or you just want to look at improving overall operational processes, There’s lots of different ways where we’d say, if you feel something’s a pain point and you’re passionate about it, let’s set up a group with more franchisees, get together, collaborate, and look at how we can jointly move that forward.

I think with franchising, it is all about that relationship. It’s also about making sure if there are any issues that people really come forward and tell you before it escalates and becomes a bigger niggle that then becomes too big to overcome. I think it’s a two-way communication process, both on the franchisor being responsible, but also as an individual, as a franchisee, being responsible for helping people understand and shouting out if you think something’s not working or if you’re struggling.

What do you look for in a franchisee?

It’s all about those behavioural competences because those are the things which we can’t influence as a franchisor. So anything to do with the technical skills, we’re confident through training, ongoing support, we can help you with that. If you need more leads, we can help you with business development. But what we can’t do is make somebody compliant. If you don’t enjoy working in an environment where you’ve got to be very open, very transparent, and everything you do has to be documented, because we’re regulated, that’s what the Financial Conduct Authority insists on. So regardless, that’s something that you have to want to and enjoy doing. Again, the insurance companies can be exceptionally challenging to deal with.

So you’ve got to be somebody who really has a sense of right and wrong and wants to get the customer what they’re entitled to. But if you’ve got compliance and customer service, if you’ve got that, then we’re confident that we can get you where you need to be through the right support and training.

What are your top tips on how you would scale your Concept Claims Solutions Business?

In terms of how we’d look to scale concept claim solutions business, I think it all comes down to really looking at how you’re operating within your own territory. So you don’t need a lot of relationships and we suggest, you know, working with like local contractors. A contractor could potentially be going out to an insurance claim every day. The average claim value is around £15,000. It does fluctuate. if you get one contractor giving you potentially one lead a day, you’re going to be very busy.

So it’s about being very strategic and targeted in terms of who you’re bringing on board as referral relationships, because the contractors can recommend the service so it really helps their customers, but you can also give them a passive income stream. So one of the quickest and most proven ways to go is by really looking at just build your own local area through those relationships with other businesses that can offer the service to their customers as well.

The insurance market is very competitive, how will you keep ahead of the competition?

There isn’t a lot of competition in our market. Last year, it was over £4 billion were paid out on home insurance claims. And when you take that into consideration, you know, that means there’s a massive opportunity per territory. Also, complaints from homeowners about how they were treated by their insurance company, as of August last year, reached a 10-year high.

Insurance companies are under an absolute immense amount of pressure because of all of the surges with weather events. So, you know, extra hot summers, storms when you get to the winter period. So all of the effects of climate change is really contributing to more pressure on the insurance companies because more people are needing to make a claim. If you do some research, you’ll find there’s actually not many loss assessors that operate within our space.

How much is the investment and what does this include?

So the investment is £34,995. What that includes is all your training, your support with things like lead generation, which is usually people’s primary concern is how they’re going to get work. It also includes things like a starter kit so you can go out and do the surveying and scoping part of your role. We’ve also got a company that we use to do calls so that they can help book appointments so that you can help generate awareness with those businesses within your local area. Things like an online review platform. So again, when you are getting those customer reviews, you can make sure that that’s really getting the right online presence and SEO and then all the technical support.

So we actually have the option for our franchisees to use head office contractors. So if you join as somebody, you know, if you’ve been an accountant and you’ve got no experience with project management or construction, it gives you a real safety net because if you use head office contractors, We appoint them, but we also pay for the cost of the materials upfront. So it means you don’t ever have to turn away any work because it can really enable you to manage a volume of work by passing some of that on to head office.

Or you can choose to appoint your own contractors where you will make a slightly higher margin.

Are there any exciting changes on the horizon for COncept Claims Solutions?

In terms of what’s on the horizon for concept claim solutions, it’s all about consolidation now and You know, we have had quite a period of growth, so it’s about really looking at how we can upskill our existing network. We want to focus on encouraging and supporting them to do additional qualifications so that they can manage more complex claims. So things like the BDMA qualifications, CELA qualifications, so that they understand more about the insurance side of it and the technicalities of dealing with bigger claims that tend to be much more difficult when you join into a bigger claim might be anything over £100,000.

By the very nature, there’s a lot more involved in that project. So if you’re new to this business where you can absolutely manage those types of claims, it will really help you if you feel you’ve got that formal qualification, just to give you more credibility and confidence that you really know what you’re talking about in addition to the support from head office.

We’ve also got plans to look at expanding lead generation through some different trials which we’re working on at the moment. It’s all a little bit commercially sensitive, but we’re constantly looking at a business, how we can evolve and grow and adapt to the ever-changing market so that we really do maintain our position as a leader within the market.