You barely see a month in the protection market go by without an announcement on the launch of a new system, tool or initiative to aid advisers when selling protection.
It’s a hugely positive aspect of the market that it continually strives to be easier to interact with, but it’s also a time consuming job to keep up with every new initiative and proposition on offer and weigh up which ones will best fit within your day-to-day sales process.
Streamlining initiatives that save time and cost, and collateral that arms advisers when discussing protection, can make a huge difference to business volumes, client experience and therefore the adviser’s bottom line. Here, we look at five ways advisers can grow their protection business.
1. Intelligent research tools
Tools that combine the advice and application process can improve the recommendations made to clients, save advisers valuable time and increase profits.
The new Solutionbuilder tool on iPipeline’s Assureweb portal describes itself as an intelligent protection quote solution. It enables advisers to review a client’s protection needs and budget to identify product recommendations, then gives the adviser options on how the products could be best packaged together, including both multi-benefit and single product comparisons. Advisers can run many quote comparisons on one screen and view them side by side.
It was originally launched with network Openwork before being available to the whole market. Openwork has said: “It [Solutionbuilder] radically improves the quality and service our advisers can give their clients, as solutions can be sourced considerably more comprehensively and efficiently than ever before.”
Ian Teague, Managing Director for iPipeline UK, commented: “In the first month Openwork saw a significant increase in both average monthly premiums (10.8 per cent) and average benefits per client (17.9 per cent), clearly showing that Solutionbuilder does not only accelerate adviser businesses, enabling them to become more profitable, but also helps to close the protection gap.”
Other research tools have been labelled as invaluable by advisers when selling protection, such as F&TRC and CI Expert. These provide advisers with a detailed breakdown of the values of protection products by comprehensively comparing product features across the market, often providing a level of detail that would be unrealistic or too time consuming to otherwise collate.
2. Improvements to multi-benefit quoting
Iress has recently made improvements to its multi-benefit offering, by launching the Protection Package on its quote system, the Exchange. It allows advisers to request a multi-benefit quote, and then ask for a multi-benefit comparison, to determine whether a single or multiple provider would be most cost effective and apply online without the need to re-key data.
Dave Miller, executive general manager for sourcing at Iress said: “In today’s market advisers will feel any inefficiency in their bottom line, so it’s crucial that technology makes the process of selling protection products as quick and simple as possible. The recent launch of Iress’s multi-policy tool means advisers are able to quickly compare individual cost of policy benefits alongside package products.
