This is the first post recounting the great discussion from our June Protection Forum. This section of the discussion focused on how the industry can better promote the importance of protection to general consumers.

Short, sharp videos of real people resonate. I rarely see any negative response to advisers posting on social media, that more often happens to third-party companies.

Setul’s LinkedIn profile

Setul Mehta:

To give you a general view of what I see from our advisers out there in terms of usage and the feedback that we’ve been getting. Definitely short, sharp videos of real individuals from within the business is resonating and resonating with new clients, because actually, even if it’s a simple explanation of the importance of income protection or the importance of this or what’s happening in this scenario, it resonates with real people. And you’re dealing with somebody and that consumer will then when they pick up the phone or meet in the office or virtually meet, they’re going to know that person. So it builds that connection.

We’ve then seen as sort of a second layer where we get from some of our firms who’ve tried Facebook advertising and sponsored posts. And again, they are finding is that they are engaging. And I get a bit of indifference in feedback as to whether it should just be a static picture or representing what the company does or the element of protection they’re get involved in whether there’s facts and figures shared or not, definitely a greater take-up when numbers are shared then when they’re not shared in different feedback, whether it’s video versus a static post.

With TikTok, we’ve got one prolific adviser who is on TikTok regularly and they tell me it works. They tell me that actually for their clients, they love it. It keeps engagement going. And it’s a very simplistic message. It’s easy to see. More importantly, I’m not hearing anything negative, and it’s a really easy area to be able to hear negative things on. The kind of negativity I ever hear is from what I call ‘third party companies’ or the online companies who tend to have lots of adverts streaming down. And they appear on my various streams. And I can see the comments where there’s often negative comments added in onto the on the streams, but they don’t tend to be direct adviser-community led, but I hear positive things in general.

In the States they have the Council for Disability Awareness which is a non-profit not associated with any one insurer and they have Disability Insurance Awareness month. Something like that could be helpful here.

Emma Thomson: We talked at the last meeting about the fact that sometimes when insurers are trying to get these messages across, it can come across to consumers in a poor way. I mean, in the States as some of you are aware there’s the Council for Disability Awareness, which is a non-profit organisation that isn’t actually any insurer doing it, it’s all about them trying to raise awareness for the need for disability insurance, they don’t call it income protection, but disability insurance. And then they have in May the Disability Insurance Awareness Month. So that sort of concentrated activity for the CDA, but also insurers to actually all get together to promote similar messages to try and raise consumer awareness. So, I mean, this is something that the Income Protection Task Force has been talking about for a number of years. I actually went across to the States with them to actually hear some of the carriers over there talk about it. And it’s just something that I just think would be quite a sensible thing for us to do, particularly if we can have a separate organisation talking to consumers about the risks without necessarily pushing any particular providers or products. We saw the benefits of Seven Families which was kind of that same approach, not talking about products or providers. We’re just talking about the risks and the need for consumers to actually think about if they have a financial safety net in place– and if they don’t, what they should be trying to do about it?

There’s a lot of talk about raising awareness as an industry, but it has to come from the insurers and it just hasn’t.

Ian’s LinkedIn Profile

Ian Sawyer: I think we’ve had this conversation too many times. Yes, insurers could do more in providing advisers with non-branded, good, well-produced material that is generic that we can all use because we’d all like to produce our own. But it’s costly. It’s difficult. You’ve got to do it really, really well. And going back to Emma’s last point about Disability Awareness Month and the Life Happens in the States, that’s exactly what we should be doing. But, and I don’t wish to be rude, but we have the IPTF, we have FTRC, we have two or three different publications. We all talk about things endlessly. We don’t get together and do anything and I appreciate that the thing that this particular chat is, if we do not have a centrally industry-funded campaign, how can the industry better promote? Well, it’s a bit of a double negative. The industry needs to come together and create a charity of some sort that everybody contributes to, be it brokers and insurers to do that work, to promote on behalf of everybody to produce it. And we’re just going to talk endlessly to until some people more clever than I actually bring it together. And that will have to come from insurers. The brokers are too small to do it.

The insurer’s adverts raise awareness but it’s a double-edged sword.

Setul’s LinkedIn profile

Setul Mehta: Sorry, I’m going to pick Vitality, because actually when you talk about who does it well– Vitality do bucket-loads of advertising across the board everywhere and you know, I’m in London sometimes and I see on the tube the adverts and all the other stuff. Beagle Street were on the TV the other day, and there’s probably stuff that goes on. If it starts the conversation going, it is a double edged sword. You know, you talk about it and I pick on Beagle Street for nothing other than that their adverts annoy me, but at least they’re talking about it, out and about and it is raising awareness. And they put some money behind it, Vitality put money behind it, Legal & General get on the various sponsored adverts with their deadlines, red line stuff, and they appear on LinkedIn although that might be more aimed at business rather than consumers. So I think there’s some good stuff out there. But again, to Ian’s point and we’ve tried this actually a network level, there’s this balance between trying to fund and knowing what advisers want versus having a massive group of advisers who have differing opinions and views and that balance. But I think there is a place where people can get together, but it’s the actual doing to Ian’s point rather than the other way round.

We get requests for animations, sales aids, checklists from our advisers.

Setul’s LinkedIn profile

Setul Mehta: Ian got me thinking around when you said some networks do really good things. And I thought, well, “what we’ve done over the last three or four years?” You really got me thinking, because if I think about what our advisers have asked us for and what we’ve then delivered, it may be that actually there isn’t much more that’s required, although we certainly are happy to create stuff, and part of this is trying to get even more ideas. But we’ve heard from our adviser community, lesser around claims stats to be honest. It’s always there, always bubbles around. But actually we haven’t had lots of requests for claim stats because they’ve all got their own, especially if they’ve been around for a while, their own story. And when they got their own story, they talk with conviction more than having them. But the stuff that they’ve asked us for is animations, so we’ve created a few of those. We’ve had sort of campaign collateral. So if we’re going to go on a CI campaign, give us a tool that shows us the report. And I know you guys have got one, et cetera, et cetera. We’ve had some other stuff around, “how can we re-engage clients, give us some checklists.” We’ve had some stuff that says if we’re doing a mortgage, as a sales aid, a simple one pager, “what is the cost of IP, CIC, and life so we can talk to the client in one go as a sales aid.” And I’m happy to show anybody, our internal marketing system that creates all of this because it can be branded to the advisers’ needs. But they have been all the things that last three or four years at a real high level that we’ve been asked for and made. And the most recent tends to be can we have more social media posts? And so we’ve started to engage and create those. And we haven’t created TikTok videos, but have certainly created stills for individuals.

We have standards around making sure any statistics or information our advisers share is from a reputable source, but other than that they’re able to share whatever they want to in whatever format works for them.

Setul’s LinkedIn profile

Setul Mehta: So free rein is probably a strong word in the context of this, financially, and we share guidance on if you want to go and say something or do something, no issue with it. If you’re going to use stats or you’re going to use data or you’re going to signal or signpost things, even if it’s the cost of this is X and the cost of Y is that, let alone the wider stuff. As long as you can evidence and point to those statistics being publicly available and validated, we are comfortable. What we always ask for is the evidence behind what you’re going to say? What’s a lot easier is where advisers will be authentic, or even if they’re not authentic, but just share sort of a “this is the sorts of things you’ve got to think about” in their own voice, in their own background. Actually, as long as they’re not lying or they’re being blatantly operating in the grey area, we’re comfortable with it. You know, we provide it with the lines that they have to say and have on at the bottom of their stuff to keep them safe. And the regulator asks us to do that. But we’re reasonably comfortable. As long as they can validate any stats or data that they use, they can be as creative as they like, because we all know that somebody might think something is ultra creative, where another person might be looking at it and thinking that’s absolutely cringeworthy. Actually doesn’t matter to us, our job isn’t to say whether something is cringeworthy or wonderfully creative. Our job is to make sure that actually the advisers aren’t operating in the grey or misguiding potential clients when they’re reading those stats. So if it’s wishy washy, but it’s validated by Cancer Research on their website saying “this is absolute fact,” it’s not our place to say it’s wishy washy or not. We go with it, but we need that validation. If we don’t have that validation, we won’t approve it. And if somebody goes off and does it, then we will penalise them.

At Vitality we’re trying to change the rhetoric around insurance as a ‘grudge purchase’ and to make it something that consumers see value from in their daily lives.

Andy Philo: I wonder whether we should, and the way in which Vitality approaches this is we’re trying to change the rhetoric. And I just wonder whether that’s something we could all sort of benefit from and remove this sort of ‘grudge purchase’ element to insurance, which we all know it generally is. It is a product that you hope you’re never going to use. So a lot of our social media promotion and our whole proposition is around giving value back throughout the whole term of the policy in the hope that you don’t claim. So we’ll be there if you if you do claim but we’ll also be giving value back. And I wonder if that’s the thing that we need to do is change the rhetoric. But that’s how our social media is, it’s obviously brand awareness because we’re a relatively new brand. It’s not aimed at D2C or the intermediaries community. It’s more about just the promotion of Vitality. And we hope very much that there’s the halo effect from an adviser’s point of view. But I think just making the rhetoric a bit more positive around the products. And, you know, I’m obviously liable to drive it towards Vitality in that explanation. But I think all insurers have got some added value benefits that are added value. And I think maybe we talk about them more rather than, we contract with you over twenty five years and hopefully you don’t die, but if you do we’ll pay out this– which is a very negative, demoralising message, particularly when you’re buying the house of your dreams or you’re engaged in securing an asset or something. So that’s where we come from at Vitality.