Insurance Without the BS - What Founders Actually Need to Know

This week I’m joined by Michael Henderson, Founder of RiskBox Ltd, a man on a mission to help creative businesses understand what insurance they really need.

Michael brings a refreshingly honest take on one of the more confusing of running a businesses. He shares real stories, practical guidance, and insights that could save your business time, money and headaches when things go wrong.

🌟 Some of my favourite parts of our conversation include:

✅ Legal must-haves vs. nice-to-haves: What’s actually required when starting out.
✅ Overinsured or underinsured? Why many founders get this balance wrong.
✅ Contracts and cover: How to handle insurance clauses in big client agreements.
✅ Cyber and ransomware: What protection looks like in a digital-first world.
✅ “Mitigation of loss”: The little-known insurance clause that could save you thousands.

Transcript

Adam Cooper (00:02.346)

Okay, so today I'm here with Michael Henderson, the founder and director of Riskbox, who helps creative and high growth businesses navigate the confusing and often frustrating world of insurance. Michael, welcome to the Fractional CFO Show. How are doing?

Michael Henderson (00:19.766)

I'm good, thanks Adam. Pleased to be here. And yeah, the probably the most exciting topics in accountancy insurance.

Adam Cooper (00:29.508)

Very good. Indeed. Indeed. Very glad to have you here. And yeah, this is one that's, when we first started talking, you, you and I were both trying to work out which was more interesting, insurance or accountancy. So I think we've got, we've got a tie, but, I think this is a, an interesting topic and the number of small business owners, a lot of this audience who don't properly understand this world. think we're to have a really good, really good discussion today. So really looking forward to this one. So,

Before we dive into the bones of it, perhaps you can give us a little bit of background about how you've got to where you've got to Michael and how did you end up starting and running Riskbox.

Michael Henderson (01:10.84)

Yeah, so I wasn't one of the two people in the country that decided they wanted to be insurance. Like most of the people who end up in insurance, it was just something I fell into. I was supposed to go somewhere towards the law enforcement side, done a degree in criminal justice and policing, but didn't because I wanted to play football at the weekends and that meant doing shifts. So ended up working for an insurer in Manchester, and that went bust. Nothing to do with me, I might add.

And then after that, I've worked for various different brokers and various different insurers. I appreciated and understood the tools of what insurance is and what it should be, why it's important. But even though there were some very good people within the industry, it always felt a bit detached from the of the raison d'etre. You know, what's the real reason you have insurance?

It's to allow people to have the confidence to be able to run their businesses knowing that they're going to be okay. And unfortunately in the insurance sector, what you'll find is that it's a bit of a bubble. It's a bit of an echo chamber and it's almost as if the actual end reality world doesn't quite exist other than to benefit inside that bubble. I used to find that really frustrating, particularly when you deal with someone who's, you know, maybe had something unfortunate happen.

you know, when something like that happens, you really need to have that product that you've got to do what it's meant to do. That is as simple as that. So I always found that a bit bit challenging. I always thought it was, you know, beyond the realms of possibility to have my own business, particularly in insurance, because it's obviously so heavily regulated. And the barriers to be able to do that are quite high. But I managed to do it. And I just wish I'd have done it 10 years before.

very, very lucky to have built the business from scratch with no investment at all. We're not huge, we're only a team of eight, but everyone that we've got, I can say hand on heart, they're lovely people. Again, that's not because I've done anything wonderful, it's just been as much as anything luck. I've just happened to have got some of the nicest people in who really buy into the philosophy that the aim is to make sure that something that isn't very

Michael Henderson (03:30.548)

know, isn't a very sexy industry, something that isn't a very interesting project product that people want to talk about to make sure that it's not too confusing that people are to be scared about it. And when they do get it, it does what you've paid for it to do. Nothing beyond that. It doesn't have to be flash. It doesn't have to be, you know, sparkly. It literally just needs to do what you've paid for it to do. So yeah.

Adam Cooper (03:55.479)

Absolutely.

No, I was just going to say, think that's exactly right. Cause when you're starting out, it's such a minefield and such a confusing area. And so the fact that you have started Riskbox in a way with that mindset, it's you're trying to clarify something that's confusing. You're trying to help small business owners. I think that's so important and playing a very, vital role there. what maybe to start with, it'd be good to start simple and understand, yeah, let's get to basics. What?

What is it that is legally required for most businesses when it comes to insurance? What are the basics that a startup needs to have?

Michael Henderson (04:37.101)

So this is one of the misnomers. So quite often someone setting a business up will be in touch with, you know, be put in touch with a broker from, I'll say the local advisory center or the bank, whoever it happens to be. And then they'll remuff all these different things they absolutely should have. And the reality is usually, depending on the industry, but usually all you need, assume you've got a limited company with either more than one director or an employee, the only thing you legally need is employer's liability.

doesn't mean you shouldn't have other insurance, but you're not going to get fined for not having the insurance. So for example, GDPR does not mean you have to have cyber and data insurance. Doesn't mean it's not a good idea, but there isn't that, you won't get fined for not having that. So the next reason people will have insurance usually is, and we see this particularly with agencies, they'll get maybe an office package together, which has got the employer's liability. And the next sort of trigger will be the contracts they sign.

So soon as they get a client that says, okay, well, I want to engage you for these services. But in order to do that, I just need to check that, you've got these different things in place or here's our terms and conditions, which by the way, say that you have to have X and Y. And from an agency perspective, the key one usually is professional indemnity.

Beyond that, other reasons that people might need insurance will be things such as directors and officers. It's quite often required if you're to go through any sort of transaction, whether that's investment or something else, it's usually something that's required. if you're growing and you want an NED on board, a sensible NED will normally say, OK, well, I will come and advise you and you will pay me a fee for that. However, I want to make sure you've got your directors and officers liability so if something goes wrong.

I'm protected because I'm going to sit on some board where I'm not going to be there day to day. And then the final reason people buy insurance is sort of more from your own personal risk management. What do you want to protect? And that goes back to the real core reason for having insurance in the first place is what's going to worry me that if that goes wrong, I can't carry on my business. How do I protect that? That's going to be them sort of things. And obviously there are things that can't be insured.

Adam Cooper (06:57.444)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Cooper (07:01.718)

Yeah, no, no, exactly right. And like in terms of, because when you're starting out, as you say, there are, there's, there's the basics, there's employers' liability, as you say, that you need to have. And then there's the others that you sort of often think you need to have. And often, you know, there's a sort of a misunderstanding perhaps from the founders that, you know, we have to have those additional policies as well.

Why do you think that is? Why do some founders end up overinsured and what is it that people sort of misunderstand from your experience around those policies and why they end up in that position?

Michael Henderson (07:44.972)

Yeah, you do sort of find that you got the polar opposite. You got the ones that won't take any easier as at all until such time as they think, no, something's gone wrong. I should have had that. And then you get the one, the opposite where someone's got ridiculous levels of cover and they're paying a lot of money for it quite often that, you know, they really should be deploying that capital elsewhere to help grow their business. I'd say probably the most common reason I've seen for that will actually be signing contracts without really looking at them.

So it's either a case of we've signed a contract, now we'll look at it, dear, we need this insurance, or they won't have, you know, they will have looked at it and thought, well, I couldn't possibly push back on any of this. So therefore I absolutely have to have this insurance, which is definitely not the case. Most of the time you can negotiate on the contract. Granted, not all the time, but you know, if you could nine times out of 10, then you would do that. And ideally not have to spend lots of money to.

pay to insurers when they quite often when they ask for high limits and so forth, you're never going to be able to claim for that. You know, if you've got been asked for a 10 million professional indemnity cover, but you've got a five grand contract to design a brochure with someone, well, yeah, the worst that can go wrong is not going to get even close to that. So you're spending money on something you absolutely don't need relative to what you do.

Adam Cooper (08:48.388)

Hmm.

Adam Cooper (09:06.839)

Now that's a really good advice. And one thing that I was told by a broker previously is to sort of do an insurance review. So maybe after you've been in business for a couple of years, have a look at your insurance policies, understand what you've got, what you need. From your experience, does that look like? That process of doing a review, you've been in business for a couple of years, what are the sort of, you know,

three or four things that you should have as part of that review that you as the business owner and founder should be looking at to ensure that you've got the right coverage at that stage.

Michael Henderson (09:41.995)

Yeah, so I absolutely agree. know, whoever you're with, even if you're with us, you know, you should, you know, every every three or four years, it's worth getting an extra pair of eyes. And if that doesn't mean you have to move, that doesn't mean you have to go elsewhere. It just means you've got someone else to say, OK, let's have a look at this for, know, from a completely different angle. And then you have what you really want to look at what the business does, what the what the services are, because they do change. You know, you need to look at the deliverables that are going to be.

going to be offered, you need to look at the type of contracts because that changes as well. So you'll start off maybe as sort of a small agency, you'll have some local clients, then you'll get some slightly bigger clients and then you'll get a really big client and that client might be based in Delaware and all of a sudden you've got a complicated US contract that says you have to have this, this, this, this, this, on a standard commercial insurance policy, you're not going to have those covers usually.

you have to get them bespoke, have to get them adapted to make sure it actually fits. So the actual what business does is one of the most important things. Then the contractual requirements are one of the next most important things. And then after that, I I'll be looking at where you want to be. So you want to make sure that you're not just thinking about what what the business is now and what's needed to protect now. You need to be able to forward plan in the same way you do with anything.

I mean, obviously, Adam, with your, I mean, can't you see, you know, you, from a finance perspective, you have to look at the future. You can't just, you know, wait and see. So it's exactly the same with insurance. You would want to look at, okay, well, we're going to look to expand out here. We're going to look to hit this sort of level of turnover. We're to look at doing this sort of thing instead. We're going to, we're going to spin off a SaaS product here. So we need to therefore look at what the implications will be to our insurance at that point.

Adam Cooper (11:30.98)

Mm.

Yeah, no really good advice there. And something you said there and you mentioned earlier, I'd like to circle back on, this reminded me of a conversation I was having just earlier today, actually. You mentioned about cyber insurance and you talked about SaaS products and I've had a client recently who was asking me about cyber insurance specifically and you mentioned you don't necessarily need it from day one, but obviously as you're growing and you've got more digital products and you're going into SaaS or whatever.

particularly with AI, I would imagine you need to have cyber coverage. Could you tell us a little bit more about what you're seeing in that space at the moment? And the conversation I had today was specifically about ransom payments. So I don't know if you've got any experience of cyber attacks and ransom payments, but again, I said I'd throw you a couple of curve balls. So maybe if you've got any experience there, that'd be really useful.

Michael Henderson (12:25.74)

That's great. Yeah, cyber insurance. So we're seeing a lot more of agencies taking cyber insurance, these goods, and the cost to actually take cyber insurance at the moment remains quite low. Whether that will stay the case as things develop, because we're obviously seeing a lot of high profile, you know, incidents, should we say. But when it comes to the actual claims, we're quite lucky. We've actually, it's not just from pure altruism that we deal with the claims.

get to learn so much from doing that. And we've dealt with some ransomware claims and they are probably the most horrible thing for an end client, for an agency to actually have to deal with. They're the ones where someone will be on the phone at eight at night and say, we've just got, we've been hacked, we've got ransomware, my business is over, what do I do? So they are horrible, horrible incidents.

Decent cyber insurance should step in from literally the first minute because you're to have to find out, know, is it a genuine attack? You know, have you actually been breached? If so, what has been exposed? What has been, you know, deleted? What has been stolen? You you have to go through and find out what systems are effective. Are there still vulnerabilities? Do they need to be repaired? What about the people who've had their data exposed? What do we do there?

you might need to, you know, check credit. There's all sorts of different things around that. And then you've got the subsequent interruption because these things when it's ransomware, they're not quick. It's not like a case of, well, an hour later you're back online, everything's good. These things take weeks. So you could be out of action for a significant period of time and you lose revenue from that and you lose clients. So as a side note as well, that's why we always say professional indemnity should be with your cyber insurer as well, because a lot of the claims will cover both.

But your question about ransomware is something that has been going on for years. Technically insurers can and do still pay ransomware.

Adam Cooper (14:34.361)

you

Michael Henderson (14:35.786)

Whether that's morally right or not, that's not for me to be able to say. And I know there's always constant legislation that's possibly going to come through. And where you'll find the impact will be is if something happens in the US where they say, OK, you can't do this anymore because you're I don't know, you're funding crime and terrorism. At that point, then it will be forbidden. But at the moment, what's generally happening is the agency will pay

the ransomware and someone will pay the agency or pay someone else, we'll pay someone else and eventually the money will come from the insurer. So there'll be a long train to make sure it's done however it needs to be done to be however compliant such a thing can be. But the short answer is at the moment, yes, whether that's going to be the same forever, well, we shall see.

Adam Cooper (15:11.15)

Mm-hmm.

Adam Cooper (15:26.628)

Okay, great answer, Michael. Thank you very much. I'll take that advice back to the person I was speaking to. That's super helpful. I'll also point them in your way so they can get a proper answer in more detail because obviously this is a free podcast and the advice is worth what you pay for it. one thing just changing tax lightly, you mentioned about contracts and potentially as you grow, needing to position yourself for where you hope to be. And so a number of like

Michael Henderson (15:33.056)

Heh

Adam Cooper (15:55.577)

the audience of this podcast, get a mix of people, but we get a lot of businesses that are scaling and they're going from smaller clients to larger. And that comes with a whole host of challenges around procurement departments and insurance clauses that they didn't necessarily need prior to working with those larger firms. You mentioned about mirroring client insurance requirements. Could you go into a bit more detail about what a scaling business should think about the first time they see one of these?

meatier insurance clauses.

Michael Henderson (16:28.533)

Well, first of all, I would suggest that, you know, you speak to your broker. A broker, obviously, you know, we can talk about what makes a good broker a bad broker at some point, but the point of it is that a decent one should know what you're doing. They should understand the agency. They are not a solicitor, so they will not be able to give you full legal advice on every single clause in a contract. But what they should be able to do is compare what you have

versus what the contract's asking for, as simple as that. And then if they've got experience in the industry, they should be able to say, well, actually, what they're asking for there is not quite reasonable. What they're asking for there, that's not quite normal. Or, flip side, no, that's pretty standard. You are going to need to do this. You are going to need to change your insurance. And yeah, that's something that, again,

A decent broker should do that and they should do that without really charging because getting it right in the first place will avoid a claim in the future anyway. Or it will avoid at least something that should have been insured, not being insured. So it avoids all the potential pitfalls in the future.

Adam Cooper (17:41.092)

Hmm.

Adam Cooper (17:45.731)

Now I think that's super helpful. And yeah, your recommendation there of sort of partnering with a broker that's an industry and specific broker is super helpful because again, they know what's specific for your industry. They know what should and shouldn't be sort of agreed to. So I think that really helps. And you mentioned before about Delaware contracts and the sort of requirements if you're looking internationally, how do you...

navigate that? How do you help clients navigate when they're going into new territories? Is it a case of partnering with with brokers locally? Do you have experience in in all territories within your firm? Obviously, you mentioned it's a smaller firm. So how do you manage that?

Michael Henderson (18:27.495)

It'll totally depend. mean, with agencies, most of the time they'll be dealing with clients overseas, but they will be based in the UK. So they will have maybe contracts in the US, for example, and they'll have a contract with a US supplier or a US client, and they'll have to make sure that their insurance is compliant with that. But there won't actually be a presence out there. Now, theoretically, that means that you should be able to control most of the insurance from the UK anyway. That doesn't always mean

That's the case. And even if the insurance is absolutely spot on and completely compliant, there will be the occasional time where it still won't be accepted by someone in, for example, in the US particularly. When those sort of things happen, you need to have support from other brokers that you're part of your network that are based in those territories. So for example, we've got a couple of brokers that we work with in the US that when we've got an issue with a client having something accepted,

We can pass them on to them and say, okay, well, you need to arrange something for them locally.

Adam Cooper (19:29.54)

Okay. And, sorry, I was just going to ask in terms of the, particularly when you're dealing, I've worked with a number of clients where they're dealing with large, you know, multinational companies and you mentioned before about negotiating and negotiating with them can be difficult. Obviously they've got their standard T's and C's, you know, they expect all of their suppliers to work with them according to those standard T's and C's. How...

Michael Henderson (19:31.765)

Adam Cooper (19:56.389)

Have you found that there's room for negotiation even with those sort of larger multinationals?

Michael Henderson (20:02.866)

Ironically, yes, the larger national, the larger sort of big corporations seem to be more set up for negotiating. So they're quite used to people pushing back on these different things. And where we actually find the problem is it's sort of sometimes in that middle area where you've got an organization big enough to have certain processes and things in place and it'll have someone employed or engaged to do that aspect.

but they haven't necessarily got the ability or the experience to actually look at something from an actual realistic, sensible perspective. So they're the ones where they can't think outside those parameters, therefore it's absolutely intransigent. That is how it's going to be. Whereas you might, you know, deal with a Sony or a Disney and they'll actually be more open to to negotiate it, for you to be able to say, the contracts only were 25 grand, we're only doing this.

we're doing it on your stage or when you're signing it off anyway, therefore can we agree to a limit that's sensible for what we're doing? So it's quite strange sometimes how it doesn't necessarily make as much sense as you would expect it to.

Adam Cooper (21:13.144)

Yeah, that's true. That's true. Okay, interesting. And you talked before about brokers and the sort of difference between good and bad brokers, not putting words into your mouth, but you know, they can be. What does good look like in your experience from a broker side of the relationship?

Michael Henderson (21:32.585)

It all comes down to trust. If you find a broker that you work with, you like, and you trust, then you generally shouldn't be moving from them. You should be with them and they should stay with you on your journey as you grow, as you develop. They should be interested in what you do. They should be available for you when you need the help. It should be as simple as that. They might not be the best broker in the world, but if there's someone you can trust,

that's going to do their absolute best for you, then that's massive. What we find a lot of the time is that people will assume that going to a large multinational broker, for example, that will be best because, and this is particularly sort of in sort of mid-sized to larger agencies, no one gets sacked for going for the big firm. You're not putting yourself out on a limb. They might be absolute rubbish and you're the, you

Adam Cooper (22:24.42)

You

Michael Henderson (22:30.196)

awesome client that they've got and they really don't care. But you're not going to get sacked for deciding to go with one of those big, big, big brokers. So we see a bit of that. But even whatever the level of broker, would always, even if it's a bad broker, I would rather go with a bad broker than get your insurance direct. That for me is the absolute cardinal sin. Without naming insurers, I I could think of one insurer who's phenomenal at marketing.

But what they deliver is way, way different to what they actually say they do. And they will have a direct channel with the agencies and they will be able to convince the agencies that everything's fantastic. Yet if they'd had exactly the same policy with a bad broker, they would have got better cover knowing that the insurer cannot charge anymore for going through the broker anyway. I personally, find that really difficult. I find that

Adam Cooper (23:21.892)

Yeah.

Adam Cooper (23:26.219)

huh.

Michael Henderson (23:30.3)

immoral that people are able to do that, but they can because they control the conversation and they spend a lot of money on, know, billboards and stuff as you go through the London Underground and you think, well, obviously they're going to be great. Well, they're not. And beyond that, I mean, one of the other things I suppose that people don't generally know, which is worth looking out for is a lot of, I know brokers are independent. You will find there are

quite a number of brokers that are either part-owned or wholly owned by insurers. And, you know, if we're ever sort of competing with that broker for an account, then we'll know exactly who the insurer is. And we can then say to the agency, you're with this insurer, do you know why you're with this insurer? It's because of X. And therefore you've not had the impartial advice. You've not necessarily had the right, the best quote or the right deal for.

Adam Cooper (24:01.182)

Hmm

Michael Henderson (24:26.196)

for your business. So, but again, it's not illegal. It's just something that I find really uncomfortable.

Adam Cooper (24:35.532)

No, that's really interesting. And I think you've sort of smashed a myth there about the industry, which is really helpful. Are there any others? Is there any kind of other myths that you think founders, again, who may not be so familiar with the industry would be good to know as they're starting their business journey?

Michael Henderson (24:56.202)

One of the things I suppose it's not directly answering your question, but one of the things that I find quite interesting is that people don't necessarily know how to use their insurance. So you buy a product and it can be therefore the use that you think it will have, but it can be used sometimes in a slightly different way if you know what you're doing. And one of the main reasons, one of the main facets we find for that is under professional indemnity, you've got mitigation of loss.

cover. And it amazes me how few clients understand what it is and why it's useful. Because what it generally allows you to do is it allows you to engage early with insurers before you've received a solicitor's letter and know, court summons or whatever happens to be at the early stage when you've got an issue with a client who's unhappy with what you've delivered, whether rightly or wrongly, allows you to have that conversation with insurers.

And if you, example, if say the end customer is correct and you haven't delivered what you should have, you've got it wrong, you've made a mistake, you still owed 20 grand of your last invoice and they're not going to pay it because you've not really done what you needed to do. You can speak to insurers early and you can have that negotiation with them and they will say, well, okay, you haven't quite delivered what it should be.

Hold off on that invoice. Let them have that invoice. And what we'll do is we will pay you the 20 grand minus your excess on the basis that if we don't do that and you're going to chase your invoice, they're going to come back. They're going to be a counter suit and it's going to cost us 100 grand. So it's not the insurers being altruistic and thinking, we're going to be wonderful, lovely people, all fluffy and cuddly. It's a case of a pure mathematical, this is going to be cheaper for us. Therefore we'll do that.

But you have to know that covers there in the first place, because it's not something where you can do all the work yourself and decide not to drop the invoice. You have to get insurers enrolled first, otherwise they won't pay you.

Adam Cooper (27:07.608)

Yeah, of course. It's all about timing, isn't it? As you say, and making sure you've got the coverage and then how to use it. No, really useful, good advice. And final question on this section was just around fees. I just wondered about transparency around fees and how transparent should a good broker be about their fees or their commission structure? What's best practice?

Michael Henderson (27:30.832)

I remember my days at a big international broker working on big aviation accounts. I didn't understand what I was doing. I was just doing the actual administration, but seeing all the different types of earnings that would be on the one policy, you'd get your commission, you'd get a fee, you'd get management expenses, you'd get overrides, you'd get profiteers, you get all these different things and you would have no idea what these all were.

And then there was, it wasn't that long after 9-11, I think it was, I think it was the Spitzer inquiry and I had some ramifications around the world and in respect to the insurance where it pushed for transparency. So a lot of the different earnings that brokers would sort of make, they weren't allowed to do anymore. Saying that, people can be creative. Again, doesn't mean they have to be illegal, but you know.

far from it. There's always ways that you can be creative and earn all these different things. So you'll find that there'll be insurers who will, certainly brokers who will have their own policy wording. And because we've got this own policy wording, which maybe we've got insurers to help develop and pay for in the first place, but what we're going to do is we're going to consider that work transfer. So we will get the extra commission from that specifically for this. And it's allowed because it goes around the rules. So you get that.

What we generally find though, to understand the case is you'll get brokers that earn a commission. And then some of them will stick an admin fee on top. I don't like that. We don't do it. You either take commission, you take a fee. It's not illegal. It's not quite transparent though, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, you've always got the right to ask your insurance broker what exactly are you earning? And you'll find that, you know, they'll

Some of might earn the commission, they might earn a fee, they might get an overrider, they might get a profit share, depending on how the account is, which might be harder to sort of see. The insurer might not offer interest-free instalments and they might offer a premium finance facility where they get some commission on that as well. So there's all sorts of different things and it is quite difficult to understand what's being earned.

Michael Henderson (29:52.862)

For me, the most important thing, it always comes back to just you want the thing to do what it's supposed to do. And as long as the price is okay, then you just want it to do what it's supposed to do. And it's no different from an agency. As an example, an agency using AI, you know, they'll get customers will say, well, you use an AI. So that's a tool. So therefore I want my my fees slashed. Well, no, you're paying for a solution.

Adam Cooper (30:17.796)

Mmm.

Michael Henderson (30:21.949)

how the agency gets to it shouldn't really concern you as long as the solution is what you want. So if you're happy to pay for X, that's what it should be.

Adam Cooper (30:30.872)

Yeah, no, it really good advice. And I guess it comes down to, you know, comparing and doing that review, as you said at the outset, making sure that what you're paying for from that broker compares positively to another broker you might be doing the review against. that's really, that's really useful advice. Final part in this section, you, when we talked earlier, you were talking about some of the campaigns you've worked on and you you've had some interesting stories.

that can bring to life some of the more wild west production insurances, for example, some of those campaigns would be really useful to sort of explain some of those to bring it to life. So I don't know if you've got any stories you can tell without getting yourself or us in trouble, that'd be super helpful.

Michael Henderson (31:15.635)

We really should have a podcast with Gemma who is our claims manager and it's fantastic for any of the claims examples. yeah, again, same with the cyber stuff, we deal with it from the start. My biggest concern with claims actually comes to the use of loss adjusters and how they can affect things. you have a claim, you have obviously the insurer then receives a claim that's supposed to deal with it, but then they will quite often

pass it out to a loss adjuster. And the loss adjuster might work for all different insurers. So it worked for the good ones and it worked for the bad ones. And depending on how their ethos is, they might default to the bad sort of practice and try and get out of everything. You've also got the fact that if they're a loss adjuster and dealing with all these different insurers, then an insurer who might have 10 policies to mentally understand, well, they might have a thousand.

It's not straightforward. So I mean, we've seen loss of justice go in and not realizing that there's computers covered under a policy and try to avoid paying something for that because they just don't understand the actual policy document. We've had ones try to literally actively trying to find any way that they can possibly get out of paying anything under whatever circumstance, pure as they can. We've had then simple mistakes. We had one who tried to avoid paying for a break-in.

because they said it was accessible by a drainpipe to the premises. But the drainpipe was about 15 feet up and you couldn't actually climb on the drainpipe because it was literally inset into concrete. So you couldn't get your hands around it. it was completely spurious. the loss adjuster had come back and said, you can climb up here, it's six foot. Obviously we knew the premises well, so we went and took photographs and the insurer said, yeah, you're right, that should be fine.

But they're the sort of things as simple basics mistakes you'll find fine from that

Adam Cooper (33:16.748)

Yeah, that's really good. As you say, when you know your clients and you're able to kind of get around when someone's trying to pull, not pull a fast one, but there might be someone who's saying something in your

You know the client, you can go in, you can take the photos, you can go back to the insurers and yeah, that's super helpful. Okay, cool. And moving on to our final section, which is our business book bonus section. And this is where we ask our guests to recommend a book or a podcast or a piece of content that's really helped them during their career. So Michael, what would you like to recommend to the audience? What's helped you during your career?

Michael Henderson (33:51.881)

The most recent one I've really enjoyed is the book by Sam Coniff, it's Be More Pirate. So it basically uses the things that the pirates used to do to allow yourself to essentially break unfair rules and rewrite rules in a fairer, better way. So just because the, you know, the...

the world says you should do X and Y doesn't mean that's necessarily the case. we've used it because we've used it to essentially, so we're a little bit of an outlier in the industry in insurance. So we're not the same as every other broker. There are some good people out there, but we are slightly different and we are a little bit rebellious in how we do things. We don't just, you know, toe the line and play the game. That's not for us. Our end game is to make sure our clients are able to.

get what they're actually paying for. So as a result, we've had to essentially create our own code, our own pirate code. And we've done that through the use of the book. And they are the values by which all of the team, we wrote it together, we all believe and we all live by. it includes having to, you know, stand up and do the right thing when the industry said you don't do it that way.

Adam Cooper (35:19.268)

Hmm.

Michael Henderson (35:19.334)

And that is really hard. That is really hard when you've got the pressure of an insurer with an echo chamber who will say, no, this is how it is for you to say, well, actually, no, that's not right. That is not okay. We've had to do that and we've had to do that on several occasions. And it doesn't necessarily make us the most popular in the industry, but it's the right thing to do. But it's great read as well.

And did you know that, you know, pirates had their own personal accident insurance all those years ago? You know, if you your arm chopped off, you can get a certain amount of pieces of aid in compensation. So who would have thought, you now you wouldn't have got that with a merchant Navy.

Adam Cooper (35:51.666)

Hello

Adam Cooper (35:58.786)

I love that. I love that. You would not, you would not. So be more pirate. There you go, a little nugget of information there at the end. Great one, very good, very good. Well listen, thank you very much Michael for your time. Really enjoyed that and really appreciate your insights, your perspective and your time. Where can people find you, find out more about what you're doing, about more what wrist box are doing if they want to get in touch.

Michael Henderson (36:26.504)

Obviously they've got the website which is riskboxuk.com. You can find us on LinkedIn as well, so a quick little search for Riskbox. They're the two main channels. We've got, you know, we've got, I should be asking Beth because she does our marketing now and she's revamping things so we're a bit more grown up and a bit more beyond just the LinkedIn and the website, but they still remain the two main areas.

Adam Cooper (36:54.602)

Excellent, excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time, Michael. Really appreciate that. yeah, we'll keep an eye out for what you're doing as a pirate going forwards. Thank you very much.

Michael Henderson (37:04.668)

Yarr, cheers!