The tool enables people to input the age and number of children they have and it gives them an average cost of raising those children until the age of 21, which can be a helpful initial gauge when discussing the levels of cover people should consider.
https://www.lv.com/life-cover/cost-of-a-child
Business protection tools
Aegon and Royal London were mentioned by advisers as having particularly useful tools for business protection.
Aegon offers liability audit, relevant life and premium equalisation tools, while Royal London offers a Business Protection Planner - a toolkit designed to help advisers make the most of business protection opportunities, including how to shape conversations, and a decision making tree to help match products to client needs.
https://www.aegon.co.uk/advisers/protection/business-protection.html
www.businessprotectionplanner.co.uk
Risk reality tool
One of the most popular tools advisers mentioned was the LV= Risk Reality tool, which demonstrates the likelihood of clients suffering long-term sickness or dying prematurely.
After inputting some basic personal and lifestyle details, the calculator generates the percentage chance of that client and if relevant, their partner, undergoing a long period of being unable to work due to sickness absence, suffering a serious illness before the age of 65 or dying before the age of 65. The figures are based on average UK wide statistics around morbidity and mortality rates.
The tool was designed for advisers to use as a conversation starter, when discussing policies such as income protection, life insurance or critical illness cover with clients, taking the conversation away from price or products an instead thinking about what is the most suitable solution for their circumstances.
Alan Knowles at Cura believes the risk reality calculator is a very good adviser tool. “For face-to-face advisers, being able to do this live with a client is very powerful and the report it produces is concise and easy to discuss.
“For telephone firms it is interesting information for the adviser but you need to be extra careful not to scare the clients, this can be a challenge for advisers who work with clients they don’t actually see.”
Emma Thomson, Head of Customer Care at LifeSearch added: “For me the standout tool is LV=’s Risk Reality calculator, as it really hammers home the importance of sickness and disability cover.”
www.lv.com/adviser/risk-reality-calculator
Scottish Widows has a similar tool mentioned by advisers as being particularly user friendly. www.scottishwidowsprotect.co.uk/RiskAnalyser
