The client questions insurance brokers hear most — and where to send each one

Clients do not carry a mental map of FCA permissions. To them, you are the insurance person. So the landlord whose portfolio you cover asks about life insurance. The director with your commercial combined policy asks whether key person cover is worth it, then drifts into pension contributions before you can stop him. It feels natural to answer — you know more than they do, after all. Resist. Most general insurance permissions do not stretch to advising on investments, pensions or, in many firms, protection products with an investment element. Answering anyway is not helpfulness; it is unauthorised business. The good news: the questions themselves are gold. Each one is a client telling you exactly what they need next, and a broker with a reliable routing habit converts that into loyalty.

Mechanics are fine. You can explain that key person insurance pays the company a lump sum if a named individual dies or is critically ill, and that shareholder protection is a different animal, funding the buyback of a deceased owner's shares. You can note that life policies written into trust usually pay out in weeks rather than waiting months for probate, and sit outside the estate for inheritance tax. You can describe what an income protection deferral period is — 4, 13 or 26 weeks being the common choices — without recommending one. The test is simple. Description of how a product category works: fine. A steer on whether this client should buy it, how much, or from whom: regulated advice, and someone else's job.

Three destinations cover almost everything you will hear in a year.

• Protection, pensions, investments — a regulated financial adviser, verifiable in two minutes on the FCA Register. Personal recommendations on sums assured, terms and providers live here.
• Wills, trusts, powers of attorney — a will specialist or estate planner. Every life policy conversation surfaces at least one client with no will; roughly half of UK adults are in that position.
• Free, impartial guidance — MoneyHelper, for clients who want orientation before committing to anyone.

Make the introduction warm and specific. A name, a reason, a same-week follow-up. Networks such as SmartPeer let brokers track those referrals and generate the disclosure letter, so the file shows signposting, not advice. One sentence in the file. Years of goodwill out of it.