Speaking at Protection Review, Jonathan Hughes of RGAx, said: “We need to give meaningful, tangible benefits to those that aren’t claiming. How do we make protection products that are meaningful, relevant and tangible?
"There needs to be regular points of contact with the customer, as opposed to a one-off sale of something that ends up in a drawer.”
8. Consider working together with aggregators and banks
Warren Copp of Pacific Life Re highlighted the fact that these channels bring huge potential volume so intermediaries would be well advised to look at ways to work together.
He added that the banks are starting to re-engage with the protection sector: for example Virgin Money and BGL Group, plus RBS and AIG Life.
9. Investigate ways to reach largely untapped markets
Almost 1 in 6 people in England and Wales are self-employed: 4.7 million self-employed within a total workforce of nearly 32 million, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
These people are driving a recovery in employment and productivity and they take less time off work for sickness, helping to drive down the sickness absence rate in the UK.
Yet they, like many others, are affected by the new rules that came in with Universal Credit that treat many of those people with individual IP less favourably than the system they replace.
Consider also the big rise in the number of people doing ‘gig’ work – short-term, casual work that is increasingly sought by people through mobile apps when they want to work. These include roles such as driving, delivering items and DIY tasks.
It’s worth looking at innovative ways to reach all of these people that would benefit from protection products, such as partnering with other professionals such as wealth managers, lawyers, accountants.
Peter Hamilton of Zurich commented: “I see opportunities in future for more partnerships: wealth managers, for example. Experience dictates that they don’t want to enter the protection space.”
10. Keep looking at the Bread and Butter market
It is very telling that only just under a third of households with mortgage debt has mortgage protection: the most basic market is still untapped.
Peter Le Beau of Protection Review, acknowledged that although it was great to see that new sales of individual IP were increasing, there was still much to do.
He said: “Consider the growing self-employed market, now standing at just under 5 million people, many of whom are exposed.
"Plus around 9.2m households have mortgage debt, but only 3.2m have mortgage protection.
“Since the demise of the mortgage endowment, we have stopped protecting our mortgage debt anywhere near adequately.”
All these are areas where advisers can bring much added-value to clients in 2018.
