Part Two of the March 2026 Protection Forum shifted from diagnosis to method, as Matthew Chapman and Terry Blackburn set out their respective approaches to preventing price objections before they arise. The session, chaired by Ian McKenna founder of FTRC & Protection Guru, drew a clear distinction between what the panellists characterised as old school and new school techniques, although both agreed the goal is the same: making price a secondary consideration by ensuring the client fully understands the value of what is being proposed.
The second half of the discussion centred on practical approaches to reframing protection conversations. Terry Blackburn drew on analogy-based techniques designed to make clients viscerally aware of the problem they are not covering, from the shopping basket to the salary reduction scenario, before introducing a more data-led new school method built around calculating the financial value of a client’s ability to work. Matthew Chapman focused on expectation management: spending time early in the advice process to agree the client’s goals, anchor solutions to those objectives, and give the client a clear sense of what the advice journey entails so that by the time solutions are presented, price is no longer the lens through which they are evaluated.
Listen to the full session recording and explore the highlights below to hear how advisers and industry leaders are calling for a more responsive, transparent and human approach to underwriting.
“We shouldn’t be trying to overcome affordability objections at the end… we should be preventing them at the start.”
“If someone says it’s not affordable, what they’re really saying is they don’t see enough value in it yet.”
“The client has to feel like they’ve come to that conclusion themselves… not that we’ve pushed them there.”
“If they truly understand the impact of not having it, the conversation completely changes.”
“We spend too much time talking about what it costs and not enough time talking about what it could cost them if they don’t have it.”
“People don’t buy protection because of logic alone… there has to be an emotional connection to it.”
Click the audio playback below to listen to the full session.
Full session audio
“If you’re getting objections at the end, you’ve lost control somewhere earlier in the process.”
“People buy on emotion and justify with logic afterwards.”
“You’ve got to find what actually matters to them… not what you think matters.”
“An objection is just a question that hasn’t been answered properly earlier.”
“We’ve got to get better as advisers at leading the client… not just presenting options.”
