Sydney advisory business The Taggart Group has launched an online financial services hub for home-based businesses.
Virtual resource, Home Based Business Directory, aims to service the specific needs small to medium (SME) enterprise niche with selected Zurich Financial Service Australia products.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show there were approximately 867,000 home-based businesses in Australia in 2004.
"There's a huge market for people to transact their own finance and insurance related purchases," Home Based Business Directory managing director Jim Taggart told InvestorDaily.
"There's ignorance in the marketplace that people working from home have adequate cover. It's naive and erroneous thinking."
Home-based business owners can buy cover in real time directly. Taggart said the transactional business would be supported by secondary quality financial advice, for which customers would pay a premium.
"My loyalty first and foremost is to quality financial advice, but it would be naive to ignore the growing market for direct, non-advice transactions," he said.
"One of Zurich's strategic focuses is on SME businesses in both life risk and general insurance, especially in the climate of underinsurance in this sector," Zurich head of life risk Andrew McKee said.
Taggart has 20 years' industry experience and is Association of Financial Advisers New South Wales director and is The Taggart Group and Taggart Nominees managing director.
