Protection Update 12th November 2021
Protection Update 12th November
Hi everyone and welcome to this week’s protection update.
I think this week is a special week. Why do I say that? Because we got back out on the road and we’ve had some fantastic roadshows over in Cardiff and London.
Each session was jam packed both in terms of content but also advisers. I thought the content was really good because it was diverse across all the different propositions and it was all about business development, so there’s definitely something for everyone and we obviously want to carry on these into 2022 and I will be able to let you have the dates for those shortly.
Bob Scott did a great job of hosting the event and his energy and enthusiasm was infectious… obviously in a positive way.
And best of all, I got to meet so many of you. Many of you who I’d spoken to on the phone, but never actually met. So, a big shout out to Paul Nunn who I’d not spoken to before… you’ve not seen any of these protection updates or podcasts, so this is your call to action to make sure you’re getting your Friday protection fix.
It was also amazing to meet so many of you in person… Roy Allaway, Craig Scott… so many more… Superb.
I’m not going to spoil anything for those of you who are attending next week in Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham in terms of content, but if you want to grow your business, get along to these roadshows… it’s going to be worth it.
I think Birmingham is completely sold out and we literally can’t let any more people into the event for health and safety reasons.
But you should be able to still book a place at Edinburgh and Manchester so I’ve added those links to this week’s protection update.
So, onwards and upwards… I’ll see you next week in Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham for those of you who are coming along.
British Friendly Protection Insight Podcast
Now last week, you should have seen the British Friendly protection insight podcast.
I sat down with Adam Shipton and we had a chat about the breathing space product which is an income protection policy without any financial underwriting at the point of claim.
Well, British Friendly have just given me a heads up that there are going to be some improvements to that product which are going to be tested over the weekend and then implemented next week.
So, I can’t get into the detail of that right now, but I’ll do a proper briefing of all the changes in next week’s protection update.
And also, I think I’ll have to record another podcast with them so that we can pick up those product changes…
If you want to view that, or any other podcast; just go to protection, then protection insights and you’ll find the full back catalogue of all the podcasts we’ve done this year. There’s quite a few.
L&G Business Protection Bootcamps
Ok, next I just want to give you a heads up about Legal and General who are running a 2-week campaign to help advisers get into the business protection market.
They are doing this by what their calling ‘bootcamps’ and this means they are running a series of webinars where you can really get you up to speed with this lucrative market.
L&G are normally pretty good at this kind of thing and they’ve come up with 7 connected workshops run over the next fortnight which are CPD accredited and will last around 30 to 45 minutes each.
The first one is a scene setter state of the nation piece where you’ll get an understanding of the opportunity.
Next, they will get into Key Person protection.
After that, it’s Key Person Income protection.
Then we’ve got Relevant Life which isn’t actually business protection (because it’s not protecting the business) but Relevant Life is a good first step to approach this market. Just remember, you will have clients who have these protection needs and it’s just about how to get into this market with a bit of confidence so you’re able to have productive conversations.
They are doing a session on Executive Income Protection. This is a new product for L&G and not many providers offer it.
Shareholder and Partnership Protection comes next.
And I guess connected to that session is the final one of the bootcamp which looks at Articles of Association and Company Accounts.
That’s an important one to know about because the articles could say what has to happen with shareholdings when a director dies or becomes critically ill.
So, there’s some good stuff in there for those of you who are interested.
We’re going to do our own Business Protection campaign next year and get into a lot of that detail. But for me, this is a market that you have to build up your confidence to get really good at it.
But that’s not to say it’s hard. It’s not.
It’s still the same basic process. Identify a financial problem that could happen if something happened to a business owner or a key person.
Would business loans need to be repaid back? Sometimes they need to be paid back immediately so has the business got the cash to make that happen?
If not; a simple protection policy could provide the funds to tackle that problem.
What about if a person who is important to the business. Could the business suffer in terms of profitability if that person became sick or died? If the answer is yes, then an injection of cash could steady the ship for a time until they’ve managed to find a replacement.
The big providers in the business protection market such as L&G, Aegon, Vitality, Royal London have really excellent specialists who will help you get cases across the line.
I always like to keep things simple.
Identify the what if. Identify whether there’s a financial problem. What’s the ideal situation?
See what they’ve already got.
Ideal, subtract actual equals the need.
As I say, we’ll get into that in a bit more detail next year but if you can’t wait until then, jump onboard the L&G bootcamp.
This week’s protection insight podcast – LifeQuote
Now I do have one more income protection podcast to let you have before we start looking at other things, but we haven’t quite finished editing a podcast I recorded with Tony over at Royal London so we’ll let you have that next week.
So, in the meantime, something completely different.
Have you ever noticed, within Solution Builder that there is a link to something called LifeQuote?
LifeQuote have a range of different services and we don’t yet have access to some of them, but one thing we do have is something called ‘Apply and Manage’.
I think that for some of you (not all of you), but some of you… this could be a very helpful service for you to tap into when its appropriate to do so.
I sat down with Gavin Judd who is a business development manager over at LifeQuote to talk in a bit more detail about how the service works, what it costs and how this could save you a whole lot of time and effort.
That podcast is attached to this protection update.
Cover article… so many life policies might not get claimed
I just wanted to finish with an interesting article I read in Cover this week.
The article is called “£230 billion of life insurance policies at risk of going unclaimed” …
Let me just say that number again… £230 billion (not million).
If you think about it, how many people know that you’ve got life insurance?
What about the policy documents? Are they easy to find? Are they in a safe place?
According to this article, it says that 18% of people with life policies (who were asked the question in this survey) didn’t tell their family members they actually had cover. It doesn’t sound like a lot?
It also said that 15% of policy holders had not provided family members or beneficiaries with the necessary information required to make a claim on the policy.
It’s an interesting one because, as people; do we really like talking about this kind of thing.
I think there’s a natural link here to the power of proper financial advice but also reviews with clients.
Remind them about what they’ve got and what it’s for.
The article mentioned beneficiaries… I think we’re talking about wills and trusts there?
That’s something we can get involved in to make sure the right outcome is actually delivered.
I’ll add the link in this protection update and you can take a look for yourself.
Anyway, with that, I’m going to sign off and wish each and every one of you a super weekend.
And of course, I very much look forward to next week’s roadshows in Scotland, Manchester and Birmingham!
