Insurance Daily | February 2023
I would like to tell the story of an ordinary entrepreneur who came to understand the real meaning of the word protection and its unbreakable bond with skillful financial professionals.
The entrepreneur founded a small, yet highly qualified boutique which operates within a market niche. While the company includes several collaborators and partners, the entrepreneur himself acts as the main point of reference for clients, partners, and collaborators.
As he reached his mid-fifties, the entrepreneur started to ponder over some important issues.
First of all, how to protect himself and others against accidents or mishaps occurring during the day-to-day activity of his company – insuring offices, collaborators, and the business.
Secondly, how to ensure continuity in case of partial or total indisposition of the entrepreneur himself, with due regard for clients, partners, and collaborators.
Several entrepreneurs share the same concerns, perhaps in the dead of night. However, few of them follow up on their worries with concrete actions; and the lucky ones who find the right interlocutor are even less.
Let’s say it with numbers: less than 20% of small and medium business owners in Italy are the subscribers of an insurance policy to protect their offices, a cyber security policy, a liability policy, and a Key Man policy at once.
It is also worth remembering that Italian small and medium-sized businesses generate over 2.800 billion euros of turnover, that is 42% of the total turnover generated by Italian businesses, 41% of Italy’s GDP, 35% of investments and 48% of export.
To quote a well-known Italian saying, “Mica pizza e fichi!” – this is not a small thing.
Back to our entrepreneur: after discussing with several professionals (banks, insurance agents, financial advisors), more or less qualified to meet his needs, the entrepreneur realized that none of them would offer one solution and one interlocutor.
As any good entrepreneur, he was not disheartened and kept looking until he met a young broker – trustworthy, qualified, patient enough to listen to him and support him in his (at times arduous) search of the right insurance policies and the right providers.
After yet another fruitful year for his business, our entrepreneur asked to meet his broker, by now a trusted reference point, to share his future projects and asses possible unprotected risks.
The entrepreneur invited his wife to the meeting – together, they discussed about the future of their business, their family and children, their passions and about the best way to protect them; they assessed existing policies, discarded useless ones, and identified new policies to subscribe.
At the end of the meeting, the entrepreneur felt lighter, more protected, ready to deal with the new year with renewed energy and more resources, sure that, should he still awake at night, the cause would not be the fear of being unprotected, but maybe a new idea for his business.
If all entrepreneurs were as persistent as the protagonist of this little story, our economy would benefit greatly.
Nicola Ronchetti