As part of Health & Protection’s Guide to PMI for new entrants, Emma Wood, director of healthcare at Broadway Insurance Partners, talks about why building relationships across the sector matters when successfully entering the PMI advice market.
It is all about knowing your client,” says Emma Wood, director of healthcare at Broadway Insurance Partners, when explaining how she led the firm in building its medical insurance advice arm.
The North West-based firm was established by Daniel Lloyd-John days before Covid hit in 2020. Initially focusing on high-net-worth individuals, the firm expanded into the corporate market given that many of its clients had business interests.
The next “natural progression” was into the personal and employee benefit space, arranging medical and life cover.
This is where Wood came in when, in October 2023, after having spent more than 20 years advising on medical insurance at WTW and Reich Insurance, she was asked to set-up the firm’s healthcare division.
What appealed to Wood was the way Broadway looks after its clients. “It is very much a one client, one Broadway approach. We are not segmented; we work as a team across all divisions,” she says.
This means not just passing the terms of a policy to a client but understanding them and their business to tailor coverage to their needs.
Broadway’s approach is not to sell insurance, but to advise, Wood continues: “We want to do well for the client. We want to look after them in the right way.”
It appears to have been a successful approach so far, as health insurance gross written premiums doubled to £2m during 2025 – just two years into operation.
This was part of £20m of business written by the wider organisation.
A step ahead
Broadway took its time to get the health insurance message across to the firm’s clients rather than launch a large marketing campaign.
“That is not the way we communicate,” Wood explains.
This is another example of the firm’s strategy to build intentionally and patiently in the right way.
This involves setting up agencies and spending time with their clients and insurers.
“There were no obstacles along the way because we were already a step ahead in being quite intentional in the way we were doing things,” she adds.
Download the Guide to PMI for new entrants here
Know your products
When setting up a health insurance agency, Wood’s advice is to spend time with providers to understand their products and the target market, “then you can be specific in your quote request to those insurers.”
She adds that insurers want to interact with new brokers, to educate them on their products.
“They will give you things you need, you just need to ask and to spend time with them,” she continues.
“Quite a few people slip up because they don’t know the products inside out, they don’t spend time with insurers to understand things properly. That is where you get issues down the line,” Wood says.
The benefit of experience
Wood’s two decades of advising consumers on their medical insurance were needed when growing the healthcare business.
Knowing your underwriting is one of her biggest lessons for working in medical insurance.
“You will know from experience when speaking to people what type of underwriting you will need.
Again, insurers will train you on this,” she adds. “It is not selling people the easiest type of underwriting; it is making sure that it is right for them.”
A caring profession
It also takes a certain personality to advise on medical insurance.
“It is emotive,” Wood says. “You could get a phone call from someone asking you to lower their premium one minute and someone telling you they have cancer the next.
“You need to care, you have to want to build a relationship with people; everyone at Broadway works to see a claim through from start to finish.
“Whether that be someone needing physiotherapy after knee surgery or helping to arrange hospice care and you end up going to a funeral.”
Despite how emotional this sector can be, advisers typically receive less commission than those who are selling general insurance, advising on wealth or charging fees.
“You have to be prepared for that because you put a lot of time, energy and resource into looking after these clients,” she adds.
A destination employer
To achieve this, Broadway needs to recruit the right people.
“We want to be a destination employer,” Wood says. “We are probably top heavy in terms of having a lot of skilled people.”
In an example of how Broadway’s approach is different, a lot of its healthcare team have a background in claims, which Wood believes helps people through that process.
“We don’t just hand a phone number to a member and say: ‘Away you go’,” Wood notes.
“We will talk with the insurer, work with the insurer and shout at the insurer if we need to. It is about the client getting support all the way through.
“We have deliberately designed ourselves that way. We are not aiming to be the biggest firm in the industry.”
The goal is to support its employees in providing consumers with the best advice and premiums that they can.
“We work with insurers,” Wood says.
“We don’t work against them. We are trying to get the best outcome for everybody, with the client at the centre of that.”
For group schemes, Broadway will look at a client’s absence data to work out what needs to be addressed and how to address it.
“We help them. We don’t just give them the information; we come up with a plan to fix those things,” she says.
‘Steadily and purposefully’
Building “steadily and purposefully with the right partners” has been the approach, not accelerating quickly or buying the way to growth. And the firm is growing.
When Wood accepted Lloyd-John’s offer in late 2023, she was employee number eight, now it is up to 52 and more people need more space, so the Stockport-based firm now has offices in Liverpool and Preston and is looking to expand again.
Broadway’s ethos has attracted some “fantastic talent,” Wood says, adding that allowing their careers to grow is important.
People spent their days supporting clients and handling renewal calls when joining the firm.
“These people are pushing themselves and are now doing webinars and giving presentations to hundreds of people.”
The business growing organically and as a team is what Wood is most proud of.
“That cultural togetherness is strong and is what we are focusing on,“ she continues.
“It is keeping that clear message of what we stand for as a business but being able to grow as a team. Everyone has a voice in our business,” Wood concludes.
Download the Guide to PMI for new entrants here