This is the second post in our series recapping the great conversation from our October Protection Forum focusing on better claims stats, case studies, and the real value of value-added services when selling protection.
We’ve tried to flag the information that really has to be correct on submission.
Grant Western:
So I think what we produced in our Claims magazine earlier in the year around sort of the claims that we weren’t able to pay was putting the focus on just making sure that the information that we get provided on the application is correct on submission, that some of the key areas relate to sort of alcohol, smoking, weight, pre-existing conditions and symptoms yet not diagnosed. So these are some of the key points where we find it can impact the claim payments when it comes to it. So we tried to put something in there around that importance. That’s one of the things, really, that we can pull out under and flag as some of the key reasons why we unfortunately can’t pay some of the claims.
Percentages without context don’t mean anything—actual numbers make a lot more sense to people.
Paul Reed:
The whole percentages piece is quite interesting. I just did a random search on here, so the numbers might not be exact. But if I said to you, that 0.2% of the UK population died from COVID in the last 12-18 months period, whatever that is, or if I said to you, 137,000 people passed away as a result of COVID, which is more powerful, do you think? So for me, I think this comes back to the whole “people, not percentages” bit because actually, if you resonate and I know the insurers do give the numbers that go alongside it, but the lead is always the percentage.
I think if the numbers of people or the incident rates were more prominent, I think that could resonate with more people. And certainly even if you just isolate the COVID bit there without wanting to get too political on it and everything that goes with that. But just the number of people that have passed away from it and equating that into a percentage, the number of people feels to me personally, you guys might think differently.
But for me, each and every one of those people represents a family that’s been affected by that. And the percentage, that 0.2, that can feel like almost nothing– in the kindest way of saying it. But if you say 137,000 people and their families have been affected by someone passing away as a result of COVID, just the marketing of it again, without sounding too coarse, it feels a whole lot more powerful of people rather than the percentage.
Sometimes insurers wanting to have these very high numbers of claims paid to publicise then means that they keep their products very narrow and don’t cover as many people in case they’d have to decline more cases.
Ian Sawyer:
I’ve got a slightly different point to make. I think on this, it’s undeniable that good news stories are useful, and it’s one of our few tools to combat the media negativity and consumer negativity in many ways. So I’m not I’m not against them in any way, shape or form.
What I worry about is when these claims stats and the stats published then have an impact on product development, design and innovation. So I’m a big fan, of having spent a lot of time in the health insurance market of using moratoriums, and this leads into Johnny’s great work in the access to insurance. Often people not getting insurance because of exclusions, postponements, etcetera, etcetera. So I’ve proposed to numerous underwriters and reinsurers to say, “why can’t we have more moratorium products? Why can’t we cover life insurance products with exclusions? Why can’t we have income protection with a pre-existing exclusion placed on it for both short and long term?”
And one of the reasons is because if you do that sort of innovation, you will get claims with which you’ll have to reject because they won’t meet the pre-existing rules, as we do in health insurance, and that will then spoil the stacks. So that’s my concern, and I don’t have an answer to this, but it’s something just for everybody perhaps to think about is: are we becoming walled by having this 99% and actually stopping more people getting covered?
We all have that attitude of saying, “well, it’s better to have £50,000 worth of cover rather than no cover if you’ve got a restricted budget.” Yet we don’t tend to apply as an industry, the same thought process of: its better be covered for a hundred different illnesses and eventualities, then every conceivable eventuality. So my point is how do we gain? How do we change and be not ruled by claims stats when it comes to our customer outcomes so that we can get more people covered who ultimately need it.
Sometimes doing a case study while someone is unwell or recovering is not in the best interest for that client. I think we should switch the focus from just claims to the more positive view of recovery and rehabilitation.
Andrew Gething:
So sort of several different points, really. First is from of a medical point of view, generally, most people with serious illness, there was a mental component to that which has affected them. And for most people, it’s better that they focus on recovery and getting better and being positive, and they will get better through their recovery period.
So, doing a case study and dwelling on that is not necessarily in the client’s interest. That and the combination of all the compliance stuff, we just do it on an anonymous basis and we find those anonymous stories are still very powerful. So to avoid that, a separate thought really, just hearing the various discussion which were all really good, is I think we should maybe differentiate when we use claim stats. And using them from the providers to advisers I think is really valuable because it allows advisers to really understand and validate those particular products.
I’m personally less convinced using those stats to the general public is so good, certainly having them in the toolbox to use. But I’m absolutely a big fan, as people have said, of using those stories, because they’re far more effective from that point of view. So that’s just from a marketing point of view. “It’s going, OK, we’re using the stats with advisers not necessarily using the stats from advisers to consumers,” which I think resonates with lots of people are saying.
And then a final thing, which is sort of a personal thing of being is actually we should move on from talking about claims and talk about recovery and rehabilitation. And if this whole topic was called recovery and rehabilitation, it would change to a more positive because we could talk about ‘this many people recovered this many people were rehabilitated or had this condition and had this change.’ Which would change the whole topic from that point of view. But I appreciate that as a big ask.
Oftentimes advisers who are doing protection as a part of something else don’t have time to explain all the add-value services to clients.
Scott Taylor-Barr:
The support services are great, I think they’re a really brilliant added feature that allows people to get value out of a policy without something horrendous having happened to them. The issue at point of initial advice can sometimes be time, especially if the protection package is part of something else that you’re doing.
So if you’re talking about a mortgage and then you’re protecting the mortgage, you’ve only got a limited amount of that client’s attention to deal with and you’ve got a lot to get through, most of it being stuff that you absolutely have to do from a compliance point of view. So starting to add on lots of additional information about added value services, that’s really, really good– I think you can end up in a situation where you just run out of time to be able to go through everything you want to go through.
What I tend to do is if there is something that is particularly cropped up during my conversations with the client over the last sort of two or three hours, I might have been spending to them over doing a mortgage and a protection fact find. Then I’ll try and pull that out. Like if they were saying, “our doctor is terrible, you can never get an appointment.” Brilliant. I can talk about the remote GP services from a couple of different providers, and that’s going to resonate with that person.
But I think you only get the opportunity if something sort of sparks off the back of that for you to be able to talk about them. Otherwise, you’ve just not got the time that you’d want.
Support services are great if they’re free and accessible without too many obstacles like pre-existing conditions.
Tim Bell:
I often talk about the added value services in particular with recently setting up a PMI plan for a small company. Talking about the covers and the options that they’ve got with it and the support services that come with it. And of course, that did raise a query from the client saying, “Well, yes, actually, that’s quite useful because I do want to have a word with someone about something.” And immediately alarm bells rang and I thought, “Oh dear, is it a pre-existing condition?”
And sure as eggs is eggs, the client phones up and the route is blocked because she’d had some mild stress mental health issue. And because she’d had this issue prior to the policy starting, then the road was blocked completely with the PMI route, which was a bit frustrating, no help whatsoever. It was just a dead phone, couldn’t be put through to anything. And I thought, “Well, that’s so unusual, you know, there must be some free support available for pre-existing conditions.”
Fortunately, at the same time, I set up some relevant life for the client, and ironically, she’s probably going to get more help from a small, relevant life policy through Red Arc than she is from paying a group private medical insurance. So I think, support services, if they’re free, if they’re accessible and there’s not too many obstacles like pre-existing conditions spouted at them, which is not what you want to hear when you’re phoning up about stress or mental health issues, however minor. So not a great experience for the PMI provider, but looks like to be a good support service from the relevant life provider.
So many clients don’t realise what they can claim on, let alone what added features and benefits they may have in their plan. We have to do a better job reminding them what they have.
Andy Walton:
I’ve just come off a business owner webinar at MAB, and we get somewhere about 100 business owners on these regular webinars that we do. And this morning we were talking with a business owner in Northern Ireland. They’ve done a campaign for the last 12 months called Reconnect, where they’re going back to orphaned customers.
And in the last 12 months, they’ve actually remarkably found 14 customers that could have made claims on life, critical illness policies. There was even a life claim. There was some ASU, there was waiver, all sorts of things. There’s a total of 14 claims that they’ve uncovered by just talking to customers, asking them what’s going on in their life. And lo and behold, there’s all sorts of things. There was even a policy that was paid out by Legal & General, where the customer had cancelled the policy in error over 12 months ago, and L&G have honoured that claim.
And I guess the point is that when they’re speaking to these customers, right, and some of them aren’t that long ago, they might only be two or three years old. The customers just have no idea really what they originally bought. And I think that is potentially the issue with these additional services as well that we can spend as long as we like talking to customers about it at point of sale, you can bet your bottom dollar if you phone them six months later, probably six hours later, they would struggle to explain what it is that they’ve got.
So I think whatever it is that we’re talking about in terms of add-ons and even the main product features itself, but there needs to be a way of all of us and maybe the provider doing a lot more to communicate regularly to the customer: “This is what you have got. These are the additional services you can claim on this. You can access this.” I think the DigiCare+ goes some way towards that, with Aviva, I’ve downloaded it. I’ve used it a number of times myself, and it’s sort of in my face because it’s an app on my phone. Vitality are good because obviously on their programme, they’re contacting customers and explaining ongoing benefits.
And maybe, that’s the sort of thing that we need to do because I’m absolutely certain that it’s a minute percentage of customers that ever access these things. If they’re not accessing core benefits, like claiming on critical illness, are they honestly going to be aware years later that they can access these things? We’ve got to do more to get it in front of customers on a regular basis.
