Growing Protection Advice in the Mortgage Market- June forum recap part two

“I think changing people’s attitudes, definitely from being premium-based to quality-driven, is a huge thing.”

“They come to us and… we’re not generally going to offer the cheapest, but we are going to offer them the best. Our position as advisers isn’t to just supply them with any policy – it’s to give them a policy which is going to give them the greatest possibilities of a payout in the time that they’re likely to need it.”

“I think it’s about time that this was looked at in a different way because actually… the whole point is not that they [insurers] should be taking on just the complete clean cases… but taking that premium on the basis that somebody knows in their time of need, that policy is going to pay out.”

“Parents can also be the biggest damage. So many people don’t choose to listen to the advice of us – they listen to the friends and family. If the parents don’t believe in it… straight away my head goes in my hands and I think I know which way this is going to go.”

“We shouldn’t shy away from things being scary. Unfortunately, it’s real. Death is hard-hitting. We can’t hide from that.”

“It would be an interesting stat to find out how many people would not be in the welfare system had they had some level of protection.”

“They had a wife and two very, very young children. They had to sell the family home. They had to move into rent. They lost everything because he just didn’t believe in paying £8 a month.”

“People are naïve enough to think they’re not going to get caught out.”

“Absolutely [insurers] should be telling people it’s a substandard policy. But the thing is, they don’t believe us… They think we’re flog-it salespeople that are trying to make a swift buck. We actually have their best interests at heart – but they just don’t know it yet.”

“Everything starts with their income. Without their income, everything’s over. They insure their dog, their rabbit, their car – because they have to. The last thing down on the list is their income.”

“Our job as advisers is to have the skill set to explain this to clients and show them what their earning capacity is over their working life – for most people, that’s well over £1,000,000.”

“The biggest hurdle I find in my business is underwriting… some insurers are really good at it… others – not so much.”

“I find that during my first appointment with a client, I mention that I’m a mortgage and protection adviser. From the off, people know I’m going to be talking to them about how they can protect themselves and their families adequately.”

“I talk about affordability… 30% of your income is generally going to be spent on your mortgage loan. 30 to 50% on your lifestyle… You really need to set aside 5%… to make sure you’re fully financially resilient.”

“We are offering a holistic approach… protecting the income, the family, and the mortgage is just all one package. It may be with several providers – but that’s how we should do it.”

“One friendly society excluded a condition and discounted the premiums – brilliant. That’s an easier conversation to go back to a client with.”

“We did about 231,000 protection policies last year, up 11% on the year before.”

“There were three key reasons why customers weren’t taking out protection: they think it’s too expensive, they don’t really understand it, and optimism bias – ‘it won’t happen to me’. All of those can be resolved in a conversation with an adviser.”

“But the one thing that remains is a mistrust that the policy will pay out. That is not something the adviser community can solve – it is a market issue.”

“If we gave customers absolute cast-iron guarantee confidence that the contract they’re signing will deliver, my guess is they probably would take a bit lengthier underwriting and maybe pay a bit more.”

“Language is really important with customers. Personally, I don’t think customers really understand what protection means.”

“The language of ‘I’m going to help you find the house of your dreams and I’m going to help you keep it’ means something to a customer.”

“Use of language that engages the customer is critical. It opens the door to a conversation. Really successful advisers are very good at the use of language.”

“Customers need to understand exactly what they’re getting and what they’re paying for it. If they’re not, they’re going to make bad decisions – and bad decisions create bad outcomes.”

“We’ve been upskilling mortgage-only advisers… so that when they refer to protection advisers or do it themselves, the protection conversation isn’t an afterthought. It’s their responsibility to hold the client’s hand through that.”

“When people take out a mortgage, it’s probably the only time they’ll talk about protection. So it’s important that mortgage-only advisers have that conversation.”

“There was a study – I think by Legal & General – that found 20% of customers wanted protection, 20% didn’t, and 60% didn’t really know what it was. That 60% is where the education has to happen.”

“Advisers sometimes take their own bias into the conversation, especially after interest rates went up. They think the client can’t afford it – but that’s not their call to make.”

“It’s about having a conversation and the art of conversation. You have to talk about protection from the very beginning and lay those breadcrumbs throughout.”

“We’re introducing something called the Protection Presenter – interactive slides that walk through the product detail and claim stats. It’s a lot more visual for clients.”

“I said I specialise in protection and someone said, ‘Oh my gosh, I never knew you worked on the doors.’ That’s when the penny dropped – people don’t know what we mean.”