Why you now need to register for Protection Guru and welcome to our latest team member
From next week there will be significant changes in how you can access Protection Guru. In just over two years we have created over 250 different studies on various areas of protection as part of our plan to deliver the most comprehensive knowledge and technical resource for protection advisers. These subjects are examined from the perspective of, and to the level of detail needed by, financial advisers.
As our content becomes more and more technical, it is less suited for casual visitors from outside the industry, so from this weekend most of our site will only be accessed able to register users. This is registering for access, just because you receive this email it does not mean you are already registered. Large numbers of you have already registered and will be able to have continued seamless access, however, if you’ve not already registered please visit this link (click here) now so that we can ensure you have continued access.
When going through this process you will also be able to register for access to our sister sites AdviserSoftware.com and Benefits Guru. If you have any interest in adviser technology or workplace benefits it is well worth registering for these now as we will be launching significant additional research resources in both areas shortly.
It is important that I point out another security mechanism being put in place. In April 2008 the then Financial Services Authority published an occasional paper on data security in financial services. You can read the report here https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/archive/fsa-data-security.pdf
One of the recommendations in this report was that advisers in regulated firms should not use webmail (e.g. services like Gmail, MSN, Outlook.com, Yahoo etc) in their businesses because of data vulnerabilities within these services. Despite this a significant minority of adviser firms still use webmail services. While we wish to support advisers we believe we must follow the regulatory guidance and apply additional security measures where firms are using webmail. Consequently, if you wish to use a web mail address rather than a dedicated email address for your company you will need to use the industry standard Unipass authentication system to access our service. Just to be clear, firms using a dedicated email domain registered to their business will not need to use Unipass.
We apologise for having to ask you to spend a little time registering but we think the additional security these changes can provide is valuable.
Our other big news this week is that Rob Harvey, formerly of Drewberry, has joined the Protection Guru team. We are delighted to be adding another highly experienced adviser to our line-up. If you haven’t read it already here is Rob’s first contribution to our site on Why I Joined Protection Guru and how we plan to help advisers address the Protection Gap.
One of the first things Rob is working on is a detailed review of all the existing content on Protection Guru to identify any further subjects we should be writing analysis on. If you think there is a subject you would like more detail on please do drop Rob or me a message and we will do our best to pull together what you need.
The agenda has now been set for our next Protection Forum on 11th May between 11AM and 1PM. We have been asked to look at some different subjects this month. These will be:
- How can we help the mortgage industry achieve more protection sales?
- What has the pandemic taught us about protection sales, and about closing those sales?
To register to attend the event please click here
Turning to our day-to-day work on Protection Guru Amanda Newman Smith been very busy generating three separate studies this week, the first was Monday’s examination of Which income protection providers off the best support for terminally ill clients?
Followed on Tuesday by investigating Which income protection providers offer the best support for terminally ill clients?
Wednesday’s insight from Amanda asked Which income protection providers have the best approach to proportionate benefits?
Finally, we wrapped the week up with a summary of the various studies produced in conjunction with our independent medical panel looking at illnesses relating to various Charity Awareness Days between January to March as the latest of our Everything you need to know studies. Even though the Charity days have now passed these provide detailed medical explanations of things you should know about these subjects in a way that is designed to help people without medical training understand the medical perspective. We have been told advisers should find this helpful when discussing the various subjects with clients.
Insight studies which were covered include:
- Cervical cancer prevention week
- World cancer day
- World kidney day
- Ovarian cancer awareness month
- Brain tumour awareness month
Over on Benefits Guru Jason Green created two studies looking at the level of integration between workplace pension providers and major payroll software suppliers. First on Tuesday he looked at Payroll integrations – which provider can integrate with Ceridian, followed on Thursday by a similar analysis on integrations with Intuit. Integrating with payroll can vastly simplify the work necessary to meet an employer’s auto enrolment obligations and it is noticeable that several more workplace pension providers support Ceridian than support Intuit. This does make me think what lessons could be learned by the group risk market in this context. If you have an involvement with benefits these studies are well worth a look.
On Tuesday we have our next Investment Forum and we will again be visiting the subject of how advisers can meet their ESG obligations. The timing of is particularly significant as new guidance for financial advisers on how to comply with the rules has recently been published and will be discussed by the expert panel. If you or a colleague would like to join us please click the link above.
It looks like we’re going to have amazing weekend weather so have a wonderful time everyone, stay safe, but enjoy some of our new freedoms.
