Protection case studies and all the other content we published last week
We started last week on Protection Guru with a new case study video from British Friendly, ‘Paul’s Story’. As Paul explains in the video, the importance of having income protection insurance in place cannot be overstated and in his case, had he cancelled the policy (as he’d considered doing) he’d have ended up in a far worse position following his illness. The case study also highlights value of additional support services, which can play a key role in supporting the claimant with their recovery and return to work.
Case study videos such as this, and at Protection Guru we continue to publish these on our Claims Hub for advisers to use, can be a powerful aid in supporting a protection conversation with clients and demonstrating why protection is necessary. Highlighting real life stories of normal people who have faced illness or injury and have thankfully had the safety net of protection to fall back, on can bring to life something that is otherwise intangible and that unfortunately these things can happen.
With the Income Protection Task Forces’ Income Protection Awareness Week coming up in September (19th-24th), now is a good time to be engaging in income protection content and utilising the various resources out there to support IP conversations with clients.
Whilst the ongoing cost of living crisis will undoubtedly force individuals and households to make tough decisions over finances, it’s essential that we don’t allow products such as income protection to be seen as an unnecessary luxury by consumers. In many cases, if those people are struggling with their finances now, they’d ultimately find themselves in a far worse position if their income was lost entirely due to ill health.
At Protection Guru we’ll be supporting IPAW with a range of income protection focused content and further case studies and stories, so make sure you’re fully registered on the site and keep an eye out for insights nearer the time.
For Tuesday’s insight we turned our attention to life insurance and specifically the free cover offered by insurers whilst a client’s application is being assessed. HSBC Life recently made some changes to their free cover, so we updated our detailed analysis to reflect this and provide advisers with accurate, up to date information on how the market compares. Whilst not providing the perfect solution to protecting clients during underwriting delays, free cover does at least ensure some immediate coverage is provided. It’s well worth reading up on this to re-assure clients if they do have to go through a lengthy underwriting process.
On Wednesday our insight looked at which insurers allow clients to ‘buy-back’ their critical illness critical illness or life cover following a claim. Whilst still an uncommon product feature and only offered by a small number of insurers, buy-back options can be valuable, especially when it comes to critical illness cover.
Returning to income protection on Thursday, we focused on when insurers will waive defer periods for linked claims.
Finally, we finished the week on Friday with a reminder of the adviser voting for our upcoming 2022 Protection Guru Awards, which are now less than 2 months away. There’s still time to submit entries into our various individual and firm adviser awards. We’d also encourage any advisers who haven’t yet voted to do so for our insurer categories, where the winners will be decided exclusively by adviser votes.
Wishing everyone a great week and here’s hoping for some cooler weather!
