Annual Statements – December Forum Recap Part 2
Welcome to our latest Protection Forum session, where we brought together a panel of leading advisers to examine one of the most impactful but inconsistently delivered elements of ongoing client servicing: Annual Statements. Our expert panel features:
- Scott Taylor-Barr
Principal Adviser – Barnsdale Financial Management - Emma Astley
Founder & Adviser – Cover My Bubble - Adam Kaplan
Founder & Adviser – Pendragon Protect
After setting the scene earlier in the session with an overview of adviser–client touchpoints, communication challenges, and the varied approaches firms use to carry out annual reviews, the second half of the discussion moved into a more detailed and practical exploration of how Annual Statements function in real-world advice businesses. This portion of the session highlighted the operational realities advisers face: inconsistent insurer processes, gaps in digital capability, and the significant amount of manual work often required to ensure clients receive clear and accurate information.
Our panel addressed several key questions central to the adviser and insurer relationship:
Why do we send Annual Statements?
The advisers explained how these yearly touchpoints help maintain visibility, prompt life updates, support Consumer Duty, and often lead to meaningful conversations that strengthen client relationships.
What information should insurers include?
Discussions centred on clarity, accuracy, and usability—highlighting the key policy details clients genuinely need, and exposing the variability between insurers who excel in this area and those who still rely on outdated formats.
How can insurers improve their approach?
The panel raised issues around the lack of consistent digital statements, limited portal functionality, delays in getting up-to-date policy information, and challenges with insurer staff understanding their own processes. They also shared examples where poor communication has created extra work or, in some cases, directly impacted client outcomes.
Below, you will find the key highlights from this part of the conversation, alongside access to the full audio recording for a deeper dive into the insights shared.
“My practice is a mortgage practice… and that’s where the bulk of our protection comes from. I think there’s a real difference in motivation… Emma’s clients use the value-added benefits far more than I hear of my clients using them.”
“The people who have gone to Emma and Adam have decided they want protection… whereas for a bulk of my protection clients, they came to me for a mortgage, they ended up with some protection as well. It wasn’t their driving desire.”
“What became very clear very quickly was how quickly the client forgot the adviser… they remembered Zurich because Zurich wrote to them every year. And that’s the point where I went, right, I’m going to make sure I contact these clients every time Zurich contact them.”
“All the wizzy stuff that goes in at the front end does not exist post-sale… it’s a nightmare at best, probably a paper-based app. To my mind that’s the obvious thing – they’re only interested in new business, not an ongoing relationship.”
Click the audio playback below to listen to the full session.
Full session audio
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 2:
“We send them to clients, but we simply do our own annual statement where it says what they’re covered for, how much, how many years left, premiums, policy number, insurer… and then we email that to the clients and ask has anything changed.”
“We remind them of the added value benefits… and also let them know about child-related products or other policies they don’t have in place.”
“Some insurers are a bit of a pain, to be honest… you still have to ring up to get the decrease in sum assured or the indexation and the premiums.”
“I did a little bit of a trial… not doing that or spending the time to find the precise details of the cover, and what we found was we had more contact because they knew they only had £344,000 worth of life cover.”
“In my experience for the last 15 years, it’s not [about losing clients]. You’re actually reassuring people about the cover they’ve got… I just say for advisers, get your annual statements out there… keep in contact with your clients.”
“Clients ring the insurer directly to talk about a claim and then they have the administration team say that it’s not covered… we put the claim through and they’ve just got paid out £30–40k for a critical illness claim.”
“We haven’t bought a lead since 2013 because everything is existing client bank and referrals… as soon as we say Pendragon, they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, Pendragon,’ but they can’t remember who they’re insured with.”
“What good looks like is Vitality… British Friendly… very simple but very effective. What bad looks like is this LV one… absolutely terrible and so confusing.”
“Every single insurer should be pushing out these anniversary statements automatically… it can be done, it should be done.”
“I’ve got nearly 16 years of data… over the last 6–7 years we’ve averaged 17½% of our business has come back off the anniversary statements.”
“I’ve had terrible situations with GIO this year… four different insurers where the team themselves don’t even know the rules.”
“It’s not sustainable to call every single client when you’ve got about 4,000 clients… that’s why the e-mail works for us. But you need to make the judgement call on when to phone.”
