The arrival of Consumer Duty has meant an improved approach to protection conversations, which is fantastic news for clients.
Its implementation has come at a particularly challenging time, though. Market volatility has put advisers under huge pressure, and even those very active in the protection space are struggling to find the time to have the right conversations.
So, what options and support are available?
Referring to a protection expert could be one answer. That could be through employing someone in-house or finding a trusted partner.
Referring externally might not be the preferred choice long term, but doing so while the market remains challenging could be a short-term solution, ensuring clients are being fully advised, while also creating additional revenue opportunities.
Underwriting considerations
Having a good pre-sales underwriting process in place avoids a lot of hassle and minimises the chances of applications not going on risk.
Referring externally might not be the preferred choice long term, but doing so while the market remains challenging is an idea
Establishing what the likely terms will be, and what medical evidence might be required before an application is made, will enable advisers to choose the insurer who will offer the best terms, underwrite with the minimal amount of additional evidence and ensure any potential increase in premiums or exclusions are acceptable with the client up front.
Factoring in underwriting to choose the best insurer first time round, and managing the client’s expectations in relation to both the time to underwrite and expected terms, will reduce the risk of them not going ahead.
Contacting underwriters to ascertain what their underwriting approach will be or using interactive pre-sales underwriting tools offered by insurers such as LV= and Zurich, will help achieve this. UnderwriteMe is another option, providing underwritten quotes from its insurer partners.
We’ve seen real improvements from insurers to help keep advisers up to date with what’s happening
Other considerations could be splitting cover between insurers to avoid medical reports that would be requested due to non-medical limits, enabling cover to be put in place faster. Royal London offers its Underwrite Later facility whereby some clients can be put on risk with the medical underwriting to follow, avoiding delays to cover.
Delegating the application
The development of application systems has been hugely positive in increasing the number of clients who get accepted online. However, to ensure accurate disclosure, the days of transferring information from a paper application are long gone.
The systems require applicants to be asked the questions in a tele-interviewing format, which can take a fair amount of time, especially for clients with multiple disclosures. Thankfully, there are ‘delegating’ alternatives to save advisers’ time.
Some insurers, such as Royal London and more recently Aviva, offer the ability to delegate the questions to the applicant themselves to complete, removing that task from the adviser firm.
These options reduce the non-disclosure risk for the adviser
A few, such as British Friendly, offer tele-interviewing whereby the client can be booked in for an interviewer to go through the application with them. It does require an element of trust for the adviser to choose these routes, and historically communications could have been better, but we’ve seen real improvements from insurers to help ensure advisers are kept up to date with what’s happening.
The other benefit is that these options reduce the non-disclosure risk for the adviser. It would certainly be a positive move if more insurers adopted options such as these to give advisers choice and help make it easier for them to write business.
Research tools
CIExpert and Protection Guru Pro provide advisers with information on the quality of cover to support recommendations, and their detailed reports illustrate to the client why that cover has been selected, reducing some of the documentation advisers themselves have to write.
More consumers will benefit from this increased focus on protection, but we need to help advisers have these important conversations. Training is naturally vital, but we must also recognise the time pressures advisers face and provide solutions to help them.
Emma Thomson is head of protection development at Sesame Bankhall Group
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