Are protection products flexible enough to meet clients’ demands in 2024 and beyond? – Part 2

“Big credits to Guardian. We absolutely love Guardian and some of their features, allowing our customers to make a use of the policy not only at the claim stage, but constantly. The Payout Planner, I believe is absolutely brilliant feature. And it is often a reason for recommending Guardian.”

“I’ve been in this situation when I’ve done a policy for my customer and a few years later, she got diagnosed with a condition that actually that provider has upgraded and added to the conditions list in October that year. And just imagine the situation that I was put into as an adviser when I reviewed her list of conditions and actually what she’s insured for and I’ve seen, ‘oh, actually, this condition is not on the list’. However, it has been upgraded in October the same year just eight months later, I still had to call her and say, ‘unfortunately there will be no payout because basically this condition is not on the list’. It has been added and upgraded a few months later. So perhaps we couldn’t rebroke it because obviously she’s been going through medical conditions. She’s been being treated. I couldn’t change the policy at that time. That put me in a very, very uncomfortable position as an adviser, having to call and explain that what you actually suffering for is not covered by that insurer. However, it has been covered a few months later, her immediate response was she was very disappointed. She said to me, ‘oh, isn’t this your job as my adviser to be telling me about those upgrades and change my policy if there is something better offered?’ She challenged me like that.”

“Of course it makes me feel bad because it is my job and my responsibility. However, once again, who does that? Would you go back to your customer six seven months later to change the policy? Rebroke the policy because something has been added? Do you understand what I’m saying? It actually puts us in a very difficult because nobody talks about it. Nobody talks about our responsibility and how it makes us feel as a feel as advisors when we are put in that position, when we have to make that phone call and explain to a customer, ‘unfortunately, you are not covered for that condition’, so there is no payout when we know that it has been added or enhanced or upgraded six months later, 12 months later, but we haven’t upgraded their policy.”

“It’s simply impossible to call all your customers every time when something is being upgraded or enhanced. And I think I’m pretty sure everybody will agree with me. Where I wish I could see more flexibility is with underwriting and with perhaps different ways and different approach to underwriting when the underwriting is stuck on the GP report stage again.”

“I know it seems like a nice problem to have to have clients that are earning into high thresholds, but in fact, their expenditure often mimics that somebody on a lesser income, sometimes the ratio is the same. We’re just talking about bigger numbers and the fact that their income is of a certain amount. It’s not uncommon for barristers to have income of in excess of £250,000, and some income protection doesn’t account for that much. In fact, all of the insurers will cut off at that point. And their income is so heavily, you know, relied upon because of the nature of it. I know that Zurich have made some really notable improvements with their ability to add and remove various additional benefits. They have a document online which shows how you can change cover, what needs to be required, and whether it will need underwriting or not. That’s really useful.”

“I’d love to see the ability for insurers to use technology alongside flexible options. Recently I went to change my car insurance and I could just go on to my portal online, change the vehicle, I could change location, and other kind of minor tweaks that I could do myself. It would be great if an adviser or a client could go on to the provider’s portal perhaps and be able to add and remove various benefits, maybe prompt the adviser to get in touch with the client if they’re doing that themselves, and kind of just prompt review of their circumstances. And to utilise the technology that we’ve got out there and the platforms that we’ve got to be able to make it easy to make these changes that we shout about and then they come to market.”

“The wording is restrictive around features that should be flexible. I think it can kind of lead to a false sense of security that you read through a policy’s wording, and it seems flexible, but in practice it’s not.”  

“My wife works part time and she looks after the kids, taking her back and forth to school. We’ve done income protection for her salary. But then if she was unable to work, I would have to go part time myself, because then I’d have to take in the kind of role of taking my kids back and forth to school. So not only will we lose her income, that’s fine. Can have an income protection policy for that. I would lose half of my income because I have to work half the hours to look after my children. So it would be good to see insurance companies look at these kind of scenarios that I think is kind of more common, because both parents have to work to get a decent sized mortgage.”

“Kind of more like a key person policy, maybe on a personal basis for those to kind of get more of a payout for the kind of person that’s doing more family orientated kind of jobs, as it were.” 

“My main problem that I have when I speak to clients and going forward really is the engagement they have with the industry and the products that they’ve taken out. It’s quite rare that a client knows what they’re insured for. So again, not to bang the kind of same drum, but on the annual statements, maybe give the client suggestions in terms of ‘have you had a child? Have you changed jobs, have you mortgage changed?’ And then if they do want to take the option of amending their policy.”

“I think that clients, once they’ve got a policy, they should be sent an email maybe every year, just letting them know kind of what policies they’ve got. And then some examples of claims that that insurance company has had. So then the client can see more value in it, because if they’re paying £100 a month, they all they see is that come out of their bank. I think so every year they should be sent an email saying these are the claims we’ve had for these products that you’ve personally got, not, you know, not just kind of generic kind of case studies and so on.”

“There’s not much advertisement for the insurance companies about policies on T.V. So you always see Compare the Market and Money Supermarket on to TV, but you never see like a critical illness Ad or income protection Ad. So I think they just need to kind of make it more aware to the average person. These policies do exist and they are kind of out there.”