MorganAsh has added a new nurse support service to the MorganAsh Resilience System (MARS), to help advisers in providing assistance to highly vulnerable clients.
The new service is now incorporated within MARS and joins a full suite of new upgrades, including appropriate treatments – or next steps – automatically triggered when customer vulnerabilities are detected.
This relieves advisers of the need to learn and understand the overwhelming multitude of potential vulnerabilities and treatments, allowing a firm’s vulnerability policies to be presented for each client at the point when they are required.
For more than 20 years, MorganAsh has looked after ill and vulnerable consumers – initially those claiming on critical illness or income protection products and, more recently, for corporates whose employees are off work because of health and lifestyle issues.
Andrew Gething, managing director of MorganAsh, said: “Cases which need assistance are typically the more complex ones, involving a combination of issues – be they health, lifestyle, family or workplace. When there is a single obvious issue, then consumers know what to do. But when there is a combination of issues, people struggle far more – and this is where our nurse support service really comes into its own.
“The first and most difficult task is to understand the real issues. Sometimes this takes several conversations; listening and probing is the most important nurse skill. Then, using counselling techniques, the consumer is helped to see the woods from the trees.
“Within MARS there is already a wide range of treatments and mitigation steps that advisers can use themselves. We expect advisers to only need our nurse support services once or twice a year – and only when really needed – but it’s always available and a valuable safety net.
“Simple signposting may superficially appear to meet Consumer Duty regulations, but most professional advisers will want to assist clients more proactively at the time of need. Helping clients through such challenges is rarely forgotten – and nurtures long-term loyalty.”