Saving Protection Policies & Relaunching the Protection Forum!

Hi everyone and welcome to this week’s protection update.

It seems that we continue to live through uncertain times at the moment. Covid is starting to feel like a thing of the past (to me at least), but the war in the Ukraine is worrying and it’s having a knock-on effect to lots of other things.

When you look at the cost of living; I don’t ever remember a time where so many things were rocketing up in price as they are right now.

I’ll give you an example.

I’ve got a chocolate Labrador Millie and she has a very delicate stomach.  We can’t just give her any old food as she would be sick, and that’s not very nice for us or her.

She has a very particular diet which is a 50/50 mix of dry food and wet/moist/tin of dog food.

A small bag of the dry dog food normally costs me £2.50 and I usually buy about 4 or 5 bags as it doesn’t last that long.

I went shopping this week and it now costs nearly £5 a bag.  100% rise in the last few weeks?

And I’m sure you’ve got lots of other examples just like that.

Perhaps some of these price rises are necessary and maybe some of them are just exploiting the current situation, but I’m mentioning this because there was an interesting article this week in Cover Magazine which talked about things advisers can do to save protection policies during this cost-of-living crisis.

There have been some studies held very recently which have put a temperature check on the thoughts of people around the UK.

For example, if you look at the LV= research; they say that 42% of UK Adults expect their finances to be stretched over the next three months, whilst at the same time; 58% of people have already seen their total monthly outgoings increase.

Royal London have published their research which suggests that 1 in 10 protection policy holders are considering reducing or stopping their premiums with a view to cutting back on expenses to help combat this cost-of-living crisis.

Guide to saving protection policies

Click here to for the cost of living crisis article >>>

Click here for the guide to saving protection policies >>>

Now the article included a download I wanted to share with you easily download it from this week’s protection update.

It talks about really simple things you can do starting with a set of things to consider when talking to your clients.

For example, how about reminding your clients of feature and benefits of their policy and reasons they took it out?

I know some of you do this anyway, but I’ve got a theory which is that many clients don’t know what they’ve actually got access to through their policy.

We talk a lot in our industry about some of these features and benefits, but do we remind our clients about what they’ve got and why these benefits are so useful?

For example, 24/7 Virtual GP Services – Seems straightforward, but do client understand the value in having access to this?  This gives you access to a GP appointment on your mobile phone.  Any time of the day and you don’t need to leave your house… that’s really good and there is real value in that.

Health MOT – for example, take a look at last week’s protection insight podcast with Royal London (I’ve added a link)

Click here to watch the Protection Insight Podcast Royal London – Helping hand 2.0

Access to nurses who have specialisms in certain conditions – for example diabetes, cancer, Cardiac, Maternity complications, oncology (cancer), Elderly care etc…

Access to independent helplines (such as those related to legal, career and medical).

Mental health support

Expert second medical opinion services

Nutritional and wellbeing advice & on-line fitness programs.

There’s a lot of value in these existing policies that policyholders can use and take advantage of.

If people see the value, it’s simply less likely the policy will get cancelled.

There is a lot more in the guide so I’ve added a link in this week’s protection update so you can take a look for yourself.

Click here to for the cost of living crisis article >>>

Relaunch of the Protection Forum

Now some of you who have been with the network for a few years might remember we used to have a forum where you could post questions, comments & observations and these would be answered by other advisers.

Kind of like a WhatsApp group but on the computer and through the adviser site.

Well, it’s always been there but it was really difficult to find and as a consequence; it hasn’t been used by anyone for the past few years.

So, we’re relaunching it and you will see a big button on each of the product area pages on the adviser site.

For protection, just go to Protection and you can’t miss the ‘Forums button’.

We have cleared all of the old content and we’re starting afresh.

If you have a question about something, post it on the forum.

If you find out something which you think would be useful or interesting to other advisers, post it.

I will be posting on the protection forum and I think that if we all engage with the forum, it can be an incredibly powerful tool.

A sales idea, something you’ve found out from a provider…

So, it’s a shorter week this week so a shorter protection update.

I do hope to see many of you at the NTE next Thursday.  It’s going to be a really good day!

Have a great weekend everyone and I’ll see you next week.