“It's all coming together to make future audits something we no longer need to feel apprehensive about”

Date: 8th July 2024

Author: Sharon Anderson - The Insurance Surgery

Celebrating 20 years of success in 2024, Macclesfield-based The Insurance Surgery has been supported by Bankhall for several years. With a team of nine advisers and a further four generating leads from customers nationwide, it’s a busy firm.

The Insurance Surgery specialise in finding cover for customers with pre-existing medical conditions, hazardous occupations, and penchants for extreme sports. Sharon Anderson, Head of Operations at The Insurance Surgery, sat down with us to talk about how switching to our new Model Office-powered audit earlier in 2024 had made her life easier.

--

We started by asking how Sharon, as Head of Operations, had ended up responsible for compliance auditing.

“When you’re in a small business like ours, you’re wearing several different hats – often all on one day. So, when something like compliance makes up just part of your job, having a tool that allows you to switch focus at a moment’s notice is super helpful.

“With compliance there’s lots of documentation, process, and filing involved; I’ve found Model Office helps me get into ‘compliance mode’ instantly. Not only that, but I can instantly see what needs my attention and generate a to-do list of actions that I need to complete – in priority order.

“If you’re anything like me, with a background in project management, you’ll like to have a plan. Model Office gives me exactly what I need.”

--

We asked Sharon how it had helped her settle into her role at the business, having joined in the last 12 months.

“Our annual audit in March-2024 was the first audit I was responsible for at The Insurance Surgery, and the first time I had used Model Office. It’s been a learning curve but our Bankhall consultant, David, walked us through how to use it and how to get the most out of it for future audits.

“It means the process will be slicker next time, and as Model Office becomes ever-more embedded within our business, each subsequent audit will become easier.

“From a personal perspective, it’s proving really helpful for me being able to evidence our progress. And the way it instantly generates and updates your scores, it makes it more motivating.”
 

We asked Sharon how the introduction of Model Office had gone down within the firm.

“It provides us with an at-a-glance view of where we are, compliance-wise. And it’s a single source of the truth; you’re not dealing with something like a spreadsheet where you might never be really sure you’re looking at the right version. So that’s great.

“Given that so much of compliance is open to interpretation, having risk ratings associated with each outstanding task is really helpful, because I can demonstrate to colleagues where we should be focusing our energies and efforts. Rather than guess at our top priorities, we know for sure.

“And we’ve now started replicating aspects of Model Office in our internal documents, so there’s consistency of format and so on.

“It's all coming together to make future audits something we no longer need to feel apprehensive about.”

--

Thank you, Sharon, for taking the time to chat with us.

If you’d like to join The Insurance Surgery in taking advantage of Bankhall’s Model Office-powered audit or wider compliance services, leave a few details and we’ll be in touch.