A lack of consistency within the protection industry is impacting customer’s trust, The Exeter head of marketing, Shelley Walker, has cautioned.
Speaking at the Women in Protection 2024 conference yesterday (May 2), Walker said there was a “lack of consistency” in how insurers report their statistics each year.
She explained: “Some insurers will say what their claims paid statistics were for the year before, that’s any claims that were notified for that year.
“However, other insurers will do the same but they will also add on claims that were codified in previous years which are still being paid out.
“I’m not here to say which one’s right and which one is wrong but there’s no consistency there.”
She warned that, if there is a lack of consistency within the protection industry, “how can we expect consumers to believe in that?”
“There needs to be a standard,” she added.
The importance of this was underscored by Shaun Ware, brand and corporate communications manager at The Exeter, who said: “Trust is absolutely essential.
“If you don’t trust the person you’re buying off, or you don’t trust the product is going to do what it says it is going to do, we’re never going to grow, we’re never going to drive demand.”
Advisers’ role
Also speaking at the conference, The Exeter head of protection distribution, Jamie Page, offered his opinion on how to drive growth in protection during the current cost-of-living crisis, stating that advisers needed to “widen the net a bit”.
He said advisers could do this by not just discussing price with clients.
“For me, if we’re going on the best price, we’re devaluing the product that we’re trying to recommend to the customer,” he explained.
“Certainly at a time when the cost of living is increasing, as protection providers we’re in a price battle to be as competitive as possible.”
However, he warned all that is doing is driving down the value of the contract and, more importantly, driving down the profits of the organisation at a time where we want operational excellence.
“Collectively, we need to find the solutions, we can’t just continue in the vanilla box of sales process that we’re all into at the moment.
“It’s how we look outside of that in order to widen and start to increase the protection sales we’ve got as an industry.”
tom.dunstan@ft.com
What's your view?
Have your say in the comments section below or email us: ftadviser.newsdesk@ft.com
