Protection News Weekly Roundup: Top Stories You Might Have Missed – 17-02-2025
Last week was an incredibly busy one for the industry both in terms of protection and the AdviserTech market with Vitality and Dynamic Planner both making major announcements. I will be doing a detailed dive into the Vitality changes in a series of articles over the next few weeks and you can find links to articles about the Dynamic Planner conference at the end of this summary.
Turning to our general content on Protection Guru last week, recognising February is National Heart Month, we started by providing background on the evolution of Heart Attack definitions in Critical Illness plans. This will be followed by a further study this week which will explore some ambiguities surrounding diagnosis, and advances in cardiac imaging and current approaches to diagnosis. Wrapped up with our Doctor’s view as to which providers offer the clearest definition at the point of claim.
We then explored if all children eligible for children’s critical illness cover? This subject is not as straight forward as you might think with significant variations between insurers especially in the cases where children living in a family may not be naturally born children. There is a need to take extra care when dealing with situations where children are adopted, the parents are legal guardian, or they are just children who live with the family. This study sums up how each different insurer in the market treats the situation. Probably another insight to bookmark for when you need it.
Our next contribution came from Amanda Newman Smith who looked at What is the protection industry doing to be LGBTQ+ inclusive? And we also gave advisers the opportunity to check How Well Do You Know Royal London’s Helping Hand service. Royal London are an insurer who regularly come out as one of the most recommended when it comes to quality products so this is well worth a read.
Thursday morning we published the first part of our recap of this months’ Protection Forum on The Impact of the Budget on Protection & IHT . Part two will follow in the next couple of days. We also asked How well do you know Zurich’s Critical Illness Cover? Going into the detail covered on their showcase pages.
At the end of the week we shared an article by Andrew Gething of MorganAsh Consumer Duty and customer vulnerability – challenges and opportunities for the pure protection market – Protection Guru
Elsewhere I really liked the article in FT Adviser that highlights the growing number of advisers entering our industry. Equally on Wednesday last week I spent a great day at Dynamic Planner’s excellent Pioneering Tomorrows Technology conference. Tom Brown at Money Marketing has written a number of excellent articles including Dynamic Planner unveils 2025 AI driven developments at conference, CEOs address growth, technology and regulation at Dynamic Planner conference and CIOs debate active vs passive at Dynamic Planner event
Morningstar have a tremendous Behavioural Finance team and I would highly commend this article Ryan Murphy their global head of behavioural insights which highlights things we should avoid when talking to customers.
Over on our AdviserSoftware.com site published an analysis of the Advisory AI a powerful set of Artificial Intelligence Tools & Services in addition we looked at Client Engagement tools DNA Behaviour and finally the tools from Octopus Money who are offering a fascinating option to help advisers earn from low value clients.
Have a great week
