Originally Posted by
Coke611
Thanks for the link there Jodelman- I shall have a look now
Don't get too hung up with the Chartered Insurance Institute bit, Louis. Sure you can learn about insurance with them, but it's the FSA requirements you'll need to satisfy to start an insurance business. You can't really compare chartered status in insurance with chartered status in accountancy for example. One is mandatory to practice, and is also much harder to achieve.
Consequently I think you'll find that relatively few insurance people actually bother to sit all the exams and wait for the necessary time to pass in order to qualify for chartered status. I heard many just sit the bare minimum like the simple (half hour?) Lloyd's Test to get their 'ticket' (via a suitable employer) to enter the Lloyd's and other city buildings and do business. I am not condoning the minimalist approach of course, but 'fleet of foot' seems the key in most businesses thesedays.
Don't overlook perhaps the biggest barrier to you starting tomorrow on your own business is the FSA requirement to have professional indemnity (PI) liability insurance that provides a safety net of sorts for your customers should you make a horrendous mistake like advise them they are covered for something when they are not, and then it happens.
If you decide to work first for an established player then you probably still need to be registered with the FSA but at least you won't have to buy the PI insurance that (hopefully) protects your customers a bit from your errors.
There are big (£) numbers in aviation mistakes so PI policies ain't cheap. So if that's number 1 or number 2 cost in your business plan for the first year, you won't get very fat for a while
