FTA: What part does the industry play in this?
GdE: The protection industry can sometimes seem to be shrouded in mystery, with its various products, jargon, clauses, conditions, loadings, exclusions and the list goes on.
There is also a real issue around trust. Customers still, sadly, don’t always believe that insurance companies pay claims and some even think that companies look for ways to avoid paying a claim, which we know to be untrue.
Women tend to be more emotionally involved in a purchase, plus want quality for fair value, and will want to feel that they
really understand the protection they are buying and the benefits it can offer.
I am not sure if this, historically, has been considered enough when developing products, and if advisers bear this in mind when they are doing their due diligence and recommendation to their female clients.
FTA: What about affordability?
GdE: Life is expensive right now and it looks like things are only going to continue that way. Therefore, we need to design and advise on products in such a way that they offer value for money and flexibility, so a female consumer can get the right cover, as some cover is better than no cover at all.
There are many different options that a customer can consider to lower their monthly payments. For example, with an IP policy you can change how long the income will be paid for, how long your customer can wait before they get a monthly payment (the deferred period) and what type of policy they have.
Do their monthly payments go up with their age? Is the cost of the monthly payments guaranteed to stay the same, or can they change? These things can affect the cost of the IP policy, and so an adviser can tailor the protection to the budget their client has.
FTA: Do you think protection products as a whole are adequately targeted at women?
GdE: There’s more to do in this area, both to better target products to customers and to develop more customer-centric products in the first place.
We need to work on building the need for protection into everyday financial conversations at an early age.
There have been improvements in some areas by some providers, where they have tailored their proposition, their distribution and their marketing 100 per cent around their target market. Recent brands like Polly and Lemonade are a good example of this.
I would say the industry still has a long way to go. But I don’t think it’s about gender specifically, it’s about developing protection products that can flex with a women’s life stages and choices and these products offering peace of mind, so that regardless of what life throws at you, your protection does what it’s supposed to.
