Holloway Friendly has launched an intermediary website for advisers who sell, or are looking to sell, income protection products.
The new site, called Kaleidoscope, was launched following research commissioned by the mutual last year, which identified a need for digital training materials for intermediaries who advise on protection products.
"Kaleidoscope is an innovative and tailored website which provides advisers with the latest thinking within the income protection industry, alongside practical learning tools to help them meet their CPD requirements," said Georgia d'Esterre, head of marketing at Holloway Friendly.
"The fact that advisers can choose their own knowledge level and work through that content at their own pace and then access new content when they’re ready, is a great way to help advisers grow their business, support more clients and meet their own professional development needs.
"We hope Kaleidoscope will help hundreds of advisers with their income protection journey and we will be frequently updating it to keep up with the ever-changing industry."
The site is structured so that intermediaries can build on their individual levels of knowledge.
Those who are new to the protection market can start out with the basics, whereas those with a higher level of expertise are offered access to more complex training materials.
As advisers progress through the different levels and their knowledge level changes, they are given access to new materials and CPD points.
Jazz Jhumat, a financial adviser, at Manchester-based advice group JJFS, acknowledged there was some good educational material already in the market, but said Kaleidoscope could prove to be very useful for advisers.
She said: "I am dealing with a lot of contractors for construction industry schemes at the moment and they all require income protection advice.
"Any additional amount of training or focus on income protection, which is massively undersold in the industry, is good. I will certainly be registering and taking a look."
Ms Jhumat explained that she would typically look at income protection as a priority when looking at a client’s monthly budgets, followed by life cover and then critical illness.
She said the industry could also benefit from a central protection hub which allows IFAs to screen products based on clients’ health-specific criteria, as the platforms currently on offer for advisers are slow, and can be time consuming to use.
