This is the second post in our series recounting the fantastic discussions from our November Protection Forum. In this section, attendees discussed the ways in which insurers communicate with clients and how they could be improved.

I think some insurers are still catching up with how important annual statements are becoming for advisers. We have a ‘My Guardian’ portal for clients but they never log onto it, so maybe we need a way to make the app more useful for them.

Guardian website

Hillary Banks:

I think this is all really valid, and I don’t think necessarily that the insurers have set out not to provide annual statements for those that don’t. I actually think it was just something that was not a requirement when we talked to advisers in the past, and I think it’s becoming something that’s increasingly important going forwards as we just understand our relationships with customers differently and your relationships with your customers differently. I don’t think we’re not doing it because we’re worried about policies cancelling. I think that probably used to be the stigma attached to potentially contacting customers, but I certainly don’t think it is now.

And interestingly, coming onto the app point, because something certainly we’ve been looking at Guardian is whether an app would be valuable and what information would be included in that. But coming back, so we’ve currently got what we call our ‘My Guardian’ account. So every policy holder has access to it. It’s a portal that has all their information on there. Customers don’t log in. We send them the information, we give them the information, we remind them of the information, and they don’t log in. And whether that is because actually it’s not user friendly and an app would therefore is something that we have access to. And maybe we need to actually just consider if we’re going to use technology, make sure that we’re using it in the most up to date and current way. Maybe that’s it.

But I think what we’ve got to be really careful of is an app is another app unless it adds value to that customer as well. So we’ve got to make sure that that app, if we’re producing apps and digital content, gives the customer what they need. Otherwise, it’s just another way of us communicating that they’re not going to access. So there’s definitely a lot that we need to think about with this. But I definitely don’t think it’s something that we’re shying away from. I just think it’s something that hasn’t been factored into our plans and it needs to. I think annual statements is really important.

Adam Higgs (Chair): I’ve been a Guardian policy holder for three years but don’t remember receiving any communication regarding a portal.

Customers are always having so much information sent to them that a lot gets lost so maybe we need to be more aware of how things are being sent out.

Guardian website

Hillary Banks: Doesn’t that highlight, though, the amount of information that we send to customers? And I think any time that any protection policy is put on risk, the volume of information that’s sent to them about different things that they need to review, that we are overloading them potentially with information at that point, which means that stuff gets lost and it shouldn’t get lost. And we maybe need to revisit exactly what it is and how we’re communicating and making sure that we’re doing the same with you. You know, making sure that our advisers are fully aware: this is the information that we’re going to send, and this is the stuff that’s really important that you need to make sure that you’re highlighting with that customer because we will have sent it to you, but it’s just got lost.

I think we gave information to FTRC a few years ago about what information we provide in our annual statements. But we definitely welcome any feedback on how we can improve them.

The Exeter website

Jack Southcott: Just referring to Paul’s point there around standardising the data, and I’m sure– Adam correct me if I’m wrong– but I’m sure there was some years ago we had to complete something, probably for FTRC that outline what we provide on an annual statement. Sum assured, policy type, waiting period, all that sort of thing. I just wonder if it’s something you’ve done recently as a comparison, because I mean, we do a simple annual letter like many insurers and that’s available on the portal. I’m not 100 percent sure if that also goes out on paper, but I’d be, like Peter said, we welcome feedback on our specific statements are more than happy to share that back with the team in terms of improvements. But I would be interested in knowing whether we did that piece of work a few years ago.

I would support getting more statements out but I’d hesitate to create a template because we could potentially spend a lot of time trying to standardise something that doesn’t lend itself to standarisation.

Zurich website

Peter Hamilton: Probably just to build on what both Jack and Paul have said. So I think Paul was questioning whether we needed some kind of lobbying to get a degree more consistency than we might collectively have here, and I’d certainly be supportive of any work that gets more statements out there because I think they are valuable. I might hesitate about trying to make them all conform to a particular template, partly because I wonder whether the problem is the fact more that they haven’t got them at all rather than they’re slightly different because in practise, I would hope most statements designed by most companies ought to put across the kind of core elements pretty clearly. What have you got? What are you paying for it? What are the additional benefits? And of course, everyone’s structure of their contracts will be slightly different. So we could, if we’re not careful, spend potentially a lot of time trying to standardise something that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to that and may not bring the kind of additional benefits in terms of clarity that we would hope, but absolutely more statements per say. But I might, as I say, raise a caution about trying to overly standardise them for the benefits we could get from that, but happy to be challenged back by Paul or others on that.

If we do the read across to the wealth space, they’ve made the information available through different routes. They’ve driven data into adviser CRMs, using client portals, through platforms, as well as paper statements. They found that clients didn’t understand the information they were getting so now there’s a real breakdown of the performance and changes and back story.

Poppy Achilles: Just a quick note on that, Peter, following on from your point, I 100 percent agree that standardising statements across insurance isn’t going to happen. And if I do the read across to the wealth market and having spent the last decade kind of working quite actively in that space, we can see that actually what the asset management and the pension providers and even platforms have done, they have made information available through multiple routes. They have definitely driven data into adviser CRMs. CRMs are spending a huge amount of money investing in client portals because those clients who do buy advice, people like myself, you know, we do know that we are being encouraged to access that single point of view through the client portal. But at the same time, I can access my data through my platform, my pension provider, but I also get the paper statements. So I think what they have definitely realised and going back to Hilary’s point, it’s not just the app, it’s not just the paper statement. You probably have to go through multiple routes. But I would then just also go back to Peter’s point about the standardisation. I think initially a lot of people in the wealth space just try to chuck a whole bunch of data at consumers. And then we found through the TCF piece that consumers didn’t understand what they were getting at. So what you now see in the wealth space is your first statement gives you the nuts and bolts. It’s evaluation, it’s your performance and it’s your charges. And then you have the back story. And I just wonder whether as an industry in the protection space, there are lessons we can learn from that. And lots of insurers here who have investment businesses attached to them and lots of advisors who don’t just deal with protection. But you see what kind of comes through in terms of the wealth statement and the wealth data that you give your clients. So I just wanted to position that point, of the read across.

The information providers give in annual statements—those that do them—the content is driven partly by what we think a customer should know but it’s also limited sometimes by the IT system as a lot of the background computer systems are often quite old and clunky. And of course the question of what will be genuinely useful.

Auxilium Partnership website

Sarah Moore: I’ve said [in the chat], “Does the industry as a whole take a different approach to the wealth industry? Or is it just different between protection providers? And then how many providers who are providing annual statements actually include an explanation of benefits on there?” So I know from my provider side experience that some providers do have annual statements, some don’t. The content of those statements is driven partly by what we think a customer should know, but also partly by the system’s limitations that we might have the kind of IT restrictions in there. It sounds daft when these are multimillion pound organisations, but the things that seem to sit in the background and drive the data sometimes are really old and really clunky. So, how do we gather all that information out of there in a cost effective way for providers? And then how much content is needed? So I think between what Hilary said and what your own experience is, it’s that question of: how much information do you give somebody and what’s going to scare them, confuse them, or just not interest them at all? And what’s going to be genuinely useful? So I’m just not sure… Protection providers do speak to each other, but it’s just a question of how comfortable people are with what consistency can be achieved and what content gives a kind of a market advantage from a consumer perspective. Well, as an adviser, you might recommend X provider because you know that their customer communication is going to be really informative.