How insurers can make risk management for everyone a reality

Consider a small shop, a village hall and a large factory. Their insurance arrangements will look very different. The people relying on each of them still need somewhere to turn for practical risk advice.

At RiskSTOP, we'd like practical risk support to be an ordinary part of the insurance relationship. We have made the case for risk management for everyone before. The question now is how to reach more customers at a scale that makes commercial sense, while keeping the support relevant and professional.

The question of scale

Directing specialist time towards larger, more complex exposures makes sense. A major manufacturing operation may need considerable professional input. Insurers understandably make choices about where their resources go.

The difficulty comes when that allocation also defines the boundary of the offer. We'd like smaller customers to have a route to appropriate help too, even if that support takes a different form.

SMEs made up more than 99% of the UK's private sector businesses at the start of 2025, according to the Department for Business and Trade. That is a substantial audience for an industry committed to helping businesses manage uncertainty.

There is already provision to build on. Aviva, for example, advertises digital guidance, self-assessment and virtual risk management. The opportunity is to make relevant support a more familiar part of the customer relationship and give people a clear way to use it.

A small premium can have a wider story

Consider a village hall used for exercise classes, a lunch club and local meetings. If damage closes the building, the consequences could reach well beyond the committee responsible for its insurance.

People might lose a regular place to meet. Activities could need temporary premises. Volunteers may have to work out what can continue and what must pause.

This is an illustrative example, but it makes an important point. A modest insurance premium can sit behind something that matters greatly to a community.

The Charity Commission's guidance for England and Wales asks charities to consider how a serious incident would affect services to beneficiaries and plan for recovery. That gives brokers a useful conversation to have: what would disruption mean for the people who depend on this organisation?

The wider consequences are a reason to consider what support might help, even where the premium is modest.

Making support easier to use

A practical starting point for insurers could be professionally developed risk guidance that smaller commercial customers can easily access, with clear explanations of what it covers and where further help is available.

It would help to be clear about funding, ownership and who handles referrals and follow-up.

Digital tools can help introduce relevant guidance when cover starts, revisit it as activities change and prompt follow-up on outstanding actions. A useful service would let clients identify priorities, record progress and ask for help. People who struggle online would still benefit from a way to speak to someone.

Guidance is more useful when it explains what information it relies on and where its limits lie. Some situations will call for remote professional input or a site assessment. Small organisations can have complex risks too.

Brokers can introduce support and help clients raise concerns, with access to specialists when technical judgement is needed.

Recognising useful progress

If the aim is to widen access, we would want to know how many customers receive guidance, how many use it and what happens next.

Which actions have clients recorded as completed, and which need further professional review? Where have they asked for help, and how quickly have those requests reached someone able to respond?

A download count can tell us that information has been accessed. It tells us much less about whether someone understood it or acted on it.

Claims performance can also be examined over time, alongside other factors influencing it. A fall in claims, by itself, would not establish that the programme caused it.

For us, meaningful progress would mean wider access, useful engagement and evidence of action.

A useful conversation for brokers

For commercial insurance brokers, this creates a useful question alongside discussions about cover and price: what risk support will this client actually be able to use?

That can lead to a discussion about how support reaches the client, how it relates to their activities and what happens if they need more help. It is also worth asking whether someone has the time and confidence to take the next step.

Our ambition for risk management for everyone is to make professional insight more accessible and appropriate to the exposure. Insurers can shape and fund that support. Brokers can bring it into the client conversation.

That could mean a broker talking about useful risk support for a shop or village hall as confidently as for a factory. We would welcome more insurers helping to make it possible.