SAIF Golden Charter

Offering plans as an introducer appointed representative

We offer two different ways our funeral director partners can work with us – as an appointed representative or an introducer appointed representative. Our introducer appointed representative model is a great option for businesses that wish to continue to meet customer demand by offering families  access to funeral plans without dedicating  the resource required to take them through the full sales process.

Under our introducer appointed representative model, funeral directors can advertise and display funeral plan information. If a customer expresses interest in a funeral plan, the business simply captures the enquirer’s contact information.

Our trained contact centre team will then follow up with the customer, meaning you don’t have to commit resource to selling funeral plans during busier at-need periods.

Our contact centre team is dedicated to supporting customers to purchase the funeral plan that’s right for them – it’s what they do every day. Many colleagues have years of experience and they’re all trained to complete sales in a fully FCA-compliant way. The sales that result from customers you refer to us as an introducer appointed representative are treated in the same way as if they were made by your business.

Almost all introducer appointed representatives who’ve referred a customer to  us have benefited from the sale of a funeral plan as a result. Referred customers are benefiting from the simplicity of the process, so much so that they tend to purchase a plan more quickly. Impressively, over a quarter of you have already sold more plans this year than last – which is good for your business; demonstrating that you can capture more of your market  share under our introducer appointed representative model.

The pathway to becoming an introducer appointed representative is much simpler than that of an appointed representative.  As you’re not responsible for carrying out the sales process you can circumvent both the  pre-sales training and assessment.

The FCA asks for a smaller amount of information about you and your business as an introducer appointed representative so the due diligence process is less than that of an appointed representative. Once you’ve completed your application and have been approved by the  FCA, your business will benefit from the gift of time, as you won’t be expected to work towards  15 hours of CPD each year.

For some businesses the introducer appointed representative may be the more suitable option, and we can support you to take this route or make the switch.

If you’re interested in finding out more about becoming an introducer appointed representative with us, don’t hesitate to reach out to your Golden Charter business manager or contact us here.

See the rest of Mark’s feature on the latest from regulation here.