Too many people have become simply wealth managers not realizing that the whole foundation of a financial plan is the insurance that holds everything up. 

Once I'd been to MDRT, I realized I needed clients to take out far more coverage than I probably suggested to them in the first place. That it wasn't a question of just a simple sum. We needed to multiply this over the possible amount of years of their life. We were very lucky in the U.K. to be one of the early markets to have critical illness insurance, still not available everywhere. 

And with longevity on the increase and yet cancer now hitting one in two of us, critical illness insurance became such an important part of what I was recommending to clients. 

I also personally find now, this many years on, that the hardest job I have is to convince young people why they need insurance. In my early days, you couldn't get a mortgage without a life policy in place. Now the banks don't care, and it's fine if you've got coverage with your job. But not many people today will have a 40-year career in that job. 

They may not get coverage when they move on to a different role. And I always say, “You don't own that. You rent it. You rent it while you're in that job.” So, my job very much was to look at where I had recommended policies before. And was it sufficient cover, and basically if somebody can't afford what they need right now, make sure you go back next year and see if situations have changed. You know, if we gave up one coffee a day, what that could do in protecting the family. It's so very important. And it was a huge part of getting me to Top of the Table. 

So, personal reasons, my own company was the recipient of critical illness payout when my husband was ill. And that's because he was the finance and IT director, as a key person. And what those funds enabled me to do at quite short notice was find replacements to make sure staff were paid, bills were paid, the system still ran. And importantly, it meant I could also work very limited time for a number of weeks without any thought of what the cost would be. We know what we can plan for, but we still don't know what will go wrong. 

It's live every day as if it could be your last. Make every day count. Remember to say to people not only please and thank you. Tell those that you love that you do. It's what we do for our clients. We help them face what could be an uncertain future. Hopefully a great future. And it's the same as we do for ourselves. 

Are our families protected? Are we doing what we tell our clients to do? Just live each day and make every day count.