One huge Thank You and may I ask a favour?

There is really only one subject that I can start with this week. My heartfelt thanks go to Johnny Timpson for everything he has done over several decades with Scottish Widows and Lloyds Banking Group to improve the protection market for the benefit of consumers and the industry.  

While Johnny may be exiting Scottish Widows, he is far from leaving the industry. He was recently made a member of the Financial Services Consumer Panel where I am sure his expert experience will be invaluable and he is also an active member of the Prime Minister‘s Champion group for Dementia Friendly Communities. Johnny has also set up his own consulting firm, who can be found at  JohnnyTimpson.com. 

Johnny’s other roles include membership of the BIBA Access to Insurance committee, which has now assumed a role taking oversight of the signposting initiative for all types of insurance including, travel, household and motor as well as protection. In the short term his Cabinet office roles as Disabilities and Access Ambassador for both the Insurance and Banking will continue until after the purdah period caused by the local authority elections.  

Overall, it is safe to say that while Johnny has left Scottish Widows he will be a major industry influencer for many years to come. 

Talking of influencers many of you may first of come to know Protection Guru through our work last year in creating our COVID19 information microsite. We have a great deal of positive feedback at the time for this work so if you found the service useful, I would like to ask a favour. Would you vote for us in the Health & Protection Awards? These can be reached at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/82QL2JJ. I would be really grateful if you could vote for us in the following categories (11) Best Pandemic Response, (15) Best Marketing and Sales Support for Advisers, and (16) Company of the Year. The above link will take you to the full voting form so you will need to complete your other votes first, the categories we are asking for votes for are on the second page. Your support in this will be hugely appreciated.  

Turning to the day-to-day business of Protection Guru this week Adam Higgs began the week with an insight highlighting Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week – how is MS covered in critical illness plans?  

On Tuesday Amanda Newman Smith looked at Which insurers provide nutritional support to clients and how do they compare?  Wednesday’s insight saw Amanda investigate Who helps advisers introduce critical illness cover to young people? while on Thursday she examined Increasing income protection without underwriting – how do insurers compare?   

Finally, we wrapped up the week with Adam’s Addressing the income needs of different demographic – everything you need to know.    

Over on our sister Benefits Guru site on Tuesday  Jason Green asked  Did you see our workplace pension and auto-enrolment ratings? These provide some valuable analysis of the good and the bad of the workplace pension market, although some of the worst laggards in the pensions industry are too scared of our exposing quite how meagre their offerings are to let us benchmark their services publicly. 

On Thursday Jason looked at Workplace pensions – data ownership and protection. This is a valuable study showing how seriously pension providers take data protection. I think it highlights some valuable issues as I am certainly aware of areas where some life insurance providers and less diligent.