Essential reading for anyone in the Protection Market, last week on Protection Guru and some special things to look out for in the week ahead
2024 has been a major year for income protection with sales increasing significantly, this says a lot about how the protection market is evolving. We are seeing signs of intense competition between providers in the areas of both price and quality so it’s crucial for advisers to stay on top of the latest developments.
With that in mind we saw two significant announcements this week. First Scottish Widows bringing their long-awaited income protection product to market. As you would expect Adam Higgs has created an analysis of Everything you need to know about Scottish Widows new Income Protection proposition.
We also saw some significant changes to a key provider’s existing proposition on Monday, so Adam also put together What do Vitality’s Income Protection enhancements mean for your clients
A growing number of advisers are using social media as a very effective way of winning new clients. If you are not yet taking advantage of this opportunity, or even if you are it is well worth reading Amanda Newman Smith’s summary Creating compelling social media content on protection with great insights from experts Matt Chapman and Ash Borland.
Last Thursday was Word Mental Health Day making it a great time to look at Why Income Protection is the best solution for protecting a clients mental health. Also on Thursday our doctors gave us some valuable insights into Advancements in breast cancer treatment how personalised medicine is shaping the future of care. This is really worth reading and I believe is a great example of the value our medical panel adds to our analysis, indeed based on recent evidence I believe there is a strong argument that Protection Guru now has better data and analysis than many insurers and reinsurers.
Friday was of course the deadline for feedback to the FCA on the terms of reference for the Pure Protection review. We discussed adviser’s views on this at length during our Protection Forum on 1st October and the highlights of that discussion together with the full recording the session were published this week transcript of that recording were published last week.
Important reminders for the coming week.
Tuesday lunchtime we have an adviser technology forum dedicated to exploring what’s already working for advisers using artificial intelligence. Having been through the preparation session with our panelists last week there are some tremendous insights to be gained from joining this session where they will share changes that have been made to their businesses that are already delivering major financial benefits. Artificial intelligence is already working successfully for financial advisers and if you’re not reaping the benefits this is a great opportunity to learn what you can do right now to cut your costs and improve efficiency.
This coming Friday is going to be party time for the Protection Industry when we host our annual Protection Guru Awards lunch this time at the stunning Sheraton Park Lane. Our party always gives everyone the chance to wear their finest glad rags and in keeping with the stunning venue the dress code is The Great Gatsby and Peaky Blinders.
Other articles that caught my eye last week
Momodou Musa Touray asked some really important questions on Protection in Money Marketing in his piece Big providers are ditching protection is a shrinking market bad for competition
Tom Dunstan at FT Adviser explored Protection experts welcome octopus’s interesting entry to the market following in from Tara O’Connor exploring Octopus enters life insurance space with Dead Happy deal
Get a 1 in 10 chance to win £100
Just a quick reminder that we still have surveys open for protection and mortgage advisers and wealth advisers on technology an it will only take you take 15 minutes to complete one of these surveys. You have a 1 in 10 chance of winning £100 voucher from your choice of Amazon, John Lewis or Marks and Spencer.
If you operate in both wealth and protection with or without mortgages, why not complete both surveys and double your chance of winning. Here are the links to the respective surveys :
The Wealth Adviser Survey is here and the Protection and Mortgage survey here.
