Becoming a Client

Most people meet this process one step at a time and never see the shape of it. Here it is whole, including the parts where the answer is no. Before any of it, check whether you are ready.

1Step one: The discovery meeting

Thirty minutes, online, no products. You describe your situation and get answers in plain language. If this does not fit, you are told so in that meeting rather than sent a proposal.

Nothing is prepared in advance. No illustration is produced, because a document projecting values decades out, written before anyone knows what the money is for, answers a question nobody has asked and tends to become the conversation instead of informing it.

The four things established are what the money is for, whether the cash flow is durable in a normal year rather than a good one, whether the plan survives a disability or a job loss, and whether this suits you at all. Frequently it does not. Someone without an emergency reserve, or carrying expensive consumer debt, or without stable surplus income, is usually better served dealing with those first, and will be told so.

2Step two: Your Financial DNA

The one piece of work asked of you: the suitability record a licensed advisor must complete before recommending anything. Not a sales form, and you decide what you share.

This is a regulatory obligation rather than a preference. An advisor who recommends an insurance product without establishing your needs, your financial situation and your tolerance for a long commitment has not met the standard the licence requires. It exists to protect you from being sold something unsuitable, which is the commonest problem in this field.

You can decline to answer anything. What follows is that some options cannot be recommended, because a recommendation without the underlying facts is not a recommendation.

3Step three: The design meeting

More than one route, walked through in plain language, with what the contract guarantees shown separately from what it does not. Deciding not to proceed is a complete answer.

The separation matters more than anything else on this page. A participating whole life contract has guaranteed values set at issue, and it may also receive dividends, which are declared annually at the insurer's discretion and are never guaranteed. Any illustration showing both must show which is which. If you are ever shown a single blended number, ask for the guaranteed column on its own.

A contract is designed at issue for a purpose and most of that design cannot be redone afterwards. One built to accumulate value quickly looks different from one built to maximise the eventual death benefit. That is why the purpose is established in step one and not here.

4Step four: Application and underwriting

The insurer decides, not the advisor. An application can be accepted, rated, excluded, postponed or declined. Nobody can promise you approval before underwriting.

Underwriting usually involves a medical questionnaire, sometimes a paramedical visit, and sometimes a request for records from your physician. It takes weeks rather than days. A rating means the insurer will issue at a higher premium because of a health or occupational factor. An exclusion means a specific cause is not covered. A postponement means they will look again later.

None of these outcomes is unusual, and none of them is the advisor's decision to make or to promise. Anyone who tells you approval is certain before an insurer has underwritten the file is telling you something they cannot know.

The whole process is set out step by step on life insurance underwriting, and what each of the three outcomes other than acceptance actually means is on rated, postponed or declined. One point is worth carrying into the meeting: the answers given on the form can be tested years later, which is why an error on an application is corrected immediately rather than left.

Book the meetingThirty minutes, online, with no products.

5Step five: After the policy is in force

Reviewed with you every year, and available between reviews. Policy loans, repayment, a change in the participation scale, a house, a business, a child's education.

The annual review exists because the contract is long and your circumstances are not fixed. A policy loan is a contractual right, and it is a loan, which means it carries interest and reduces the death benefit until it is repaid. A change in the dividend scale changes what the non-guaranteed part of the contract does, and that is the moment to look at the plan again rather than the moment to worry.

How long the whole thing takes

The discovery meeting is thirty minutes. The suitability record is usually one sitting. The design meeting is an hour or so, and there is often a gap before it while the design is prepared properly.

Underwriting is the long part and the part nobody controls: two to six weeks is ordinary, longer if records are requested from a physician. From first conversation to a policy in force, six to ten weeks is a reasonable expectation, and anyone promising materially faster is describing the paperwork rather than the underwriting.

There is no advantage to hurrying. A contract designed in a rush is designed once and lived with for decades.

Where this can stop, and what it costs

You can stop at any step. At steps one, three and four, stopping is a common outcome and not a failure of the process.

Nothing is charged at any stage. The practice is paid a commission by the insurer if a policy is issued, weighted heavily toward the first years. That is a conflict of interest, it is disclosed here rather than at the end, and it is the reason the suitability record in step two is not optional.

Nothing on this page is personalised financial, insurance, tax or legal advice, and reading it creates no professional relationship.

What the practice needs from you, and when

At the discovery meeting: nothing. No documents, no figures, no statements. Thirty minutes of conversation, and you can end it having supplied nothing at all.

Before a design meeting: the suitability record. A licensed advisor may not recommend anything without one, and it is the only piece of work asked of you in the whole process. Income, obligations, what is already in place, what you are trying to do, and over what period. You decide what you share, and a refusal to answer a question is an answer the record can carry.

At application: what the insurer asks for, not what the advisor asks for. Medical history, and sometimes a paramedical appointment arranged at the insurer's cost. The insurer sets that list, and it varies with the amount of coverage and your age.

After the policy is in force: an hour a year. The annual review is where a change in the participation scale, a change in your circumstances, or a question about an advance gets dealt with while it is still small.

What happens if you stop

Before an application is signed, nothing happens. No file is opened, no fee is charged, and nothing is reported anywhere. Most first conversations end here and that is the normal outcome rather than a failure of the process.

After a policy is issued, the contract is yours. It can be surrendered, and early surrender can return less than was paid, which is the single most expensive way to discover that a contract was arranged for the wrong reason. That is why the suitability work happens before the application rather than after it.

A contract you cannot fund is worse than no contract. If the premium depends on income that is not durable, the honest answer at the design meeting is a smaller contract or none, and it is given at that meeting rather than discovered three years later.

There is one more thing worth saying about stopping, and it is the part people find hardest to believe until they have seen it. Nobody at the firm is compensated for talking a household out of a decision it has already reached. The commission on a policy that lapses in year four is largely recovered by the insurer, so a contract sold to somebody who cannot sustain it is worse than no contract at all, for them and for the practice. The incentives point the same way as the advice, which is not true everywhere and is worth checking wherever you are.

A last word on the shape of the relationship itself. The work does not end at issue and it is not meant to: the annual review is where a contract is kept aligned with a household that keeps changing. Incomes move, children arrive, businesses are sold, marriages end and begin. A contract designed around one set of facts and never revisited will still pay its death benefit, but it will not be doing the other things it was arranged to do.

If you already hold a policy somewhere else

A household that already owns a contract is not starting from nothing, and the first question at a discovery meeting is usually whether the existing coverage still fits rather than whether to replace it. Replacing an in-force contract resets the years during which acquisition costs are recovered, and a contract surrendered inside that window can return less than was paid into it. That cost has to be weighed against whatever the replacement is meant to fix, and weighing it honestly means reading the existing policy first rather than starting from a new proposal.

There are cases where replacement is the right answer: a contract that no longer matches the purpose it was bought for, a design that has drifted from what was intended, or a household whose circumstances have changed enough that the original coverage amount no longer makes sense. There are also cases where the better answer is to leave the existing contract exactly as it is and build around it, adding coverage rather than replacing what already works. Neither answer is assumed in advance. The suitability record in step two is completed with the existing contract in hand, not instead of it, so the comparison is made on the actual numbers in your own file rather than on a general argument about one approach against another.

What to bring, and what not to worry about

Nothing needs to be prepared before the discovery meeting, but a household that already owns a policy gets more out of that first conversation by bringing the most recent annual statement and, where it still exists, the illustration produced when the contract was issued. Neither is required, and their absence does not delay anything: a request to the insurer for a current in-force illustration takes a written request and a few weeks, and this practice can make that request on your behalf once you are a client. What matters most at the first meeting is not the paperwork but a plain description of what the money is for and over what period, since every step that follows is built on that answer rather than on any document.

What a first meeting does not do

It does not price anything, because a design depends on age, health, cash flow and what the contract is for, and none of those is settled in half an hour.

It does not commit you to a second meeting. Most first conversations end with a reading list rather than a proposal, and a good number end with the answer that this is not the right use of your money at present.

It does not replace your accountant or your lawyer. Where a question is theirs, the meeting says so and stops, which is the shortest honest answer available and the one this practice is bound to give.