At our December Protection Forum we asked advisers to tell us their wishes for the protection industry for the coming year. They had some fantastic ideas from communication improvements to how BMIs are used to adjusting policies around mental health and updating the underwriting process which are delighted to share with you below.
“Better communication throughout the whole underwriting and claims process. There’s an insurer where the updates on the website don’t mean anything and you still have to call up because you can’t make sense of the internal jargon, even as an adviser.”
“One annoyance for me with submitting applications is anything to do with BMI. I have a lot of clients who, for example, play sports or are bodybuilders or personal trainers and it’s very frustrating to have that conversation with a very fit and healthy client that because they have a high BMI they’re now being charge more.
Because for me, that’s basically encouraging them to not exercise or go to the gym or eat healthy in order to have a normal premium. I don’t know if it’s possible because you can’t really distinguish between different clients, but that would definitely be my wish for 2022.”
“As an industry we see more and more cases from both successful claims and from clients who haven’t been paid out. But I think it’s a big thing that clients gear insurance and the idea that it never pays because they only hear bad stories and it builds fear for them even enquiring about insurance. So I would really like both insurers and advisers work together to help educate and reassure our followers.
Followers don’t want to see celebrities talking about insurance because they see through it and know they’re being paid—real-life stories are more effective. We need to be better as an industry about reaching out to these clients who have had successful claims no matter how big or small, because those are what’s going to make a difference.
We need more of these good stories and even the bad ones to educate clients on what’s needed and why some claims don’t pay out because it would stop them from doing the non-disclosures and missing things off that are important. So really, let’s stop being afraid of what we put on social media and just talk and educate.”
“My wish for 2022 is to see more real talk. I don’t just want to see claims stories—I want to see everything. I want to get rid of the jargon, to talk in reality, in proper context. Explain how things work, but also talk about how we find our industry and talk more openly. It’s lovely that we talk in these forums, but why don’t we talk publicly as well?
So I think for 2022 more real talk more showing people that we are real humans and we just want to support them because that’s, I’m sure why we all do it. It’s not for the money. And making sure that we put ourselves out there and continue that growth that I was celebrating that we’ve had in 2021.”
“I’d like to see insurers dedicate more resource to claims process, helping clients realise their policy proceeds as quickly as we can. I’d also like there to be a bit more visibility from insurers about the turnaround times when they publish their claims stats and be more accountable around how long it takes them to process claims. Because you can bet your bottom dollar that if they’re being graded on that and metric was placed on it in comparison to their peers, then they would dedicate more resource to it as to not be outdone.”
“I think we’ve moved a long way with mental health underwriting, I want to see us do better. I actually want to see the industry adopt a ten-year forget rule on suicide and self-harm and a five year forget rule on thoughts of self-harm. Is it really right that a client who tried to take their life as a teenager still has to declare that they did that when they are 40 or 50 years old? It could be 20 or 30 years ago that they had that, and yet we are still dredging up that stuff. In Australia they’ve got a ten-year forget rule on cancer. I’m not saying we do the same thing here, but for mental health surely we should do.”
“I’d also like to bring it back to underwriting. Starting my career over 30 years ago as an underwriter, the one thing that probably I’ve been really disappointed in that I’ve never really changed the way we fundamentally underwrite. The questions we asked today are very similar to what we asked three decades ago.
The process is the same 30-40 questions, get medical evidence to check the answers and then apply sort of aggregate ratings on to people. Other sectors that deal with risk have moved on tremendously, are using different data, different sources. I think we’re going to struggle now to rely on underwriting tools that we have, which is GP reports. We’ve all heard about the delay. You know, the NHS service isn’t geared up now to providing reports in the way that we had them.
I think it’s time to stop tweaking underwriting and fundamentally shift how we underwrite. But it does link up to good distribution because I think we can enable insurers and reinsurers to move in a different way if we can guarantee good disclosures and good distribution as well.”
