September and October are set to see £38 billion of mortgages mature as remortgage customers making the most of low interest rates come to the end of their fixed period, making it the perfect time for advisers to make additional commission via general insurance sales. Plus, Paymentshield’s 3 month free Home Insurance offer for new customers going through a remortgage or product transfer makes it even easier for advisers to start a conversation about general insurance with their clients.

After the mortgage is arranged, sadly there are still some advisers who offer no further advice on financial products, ignoring the countless eventualities that could negatively affect their client’s home or their ability to keep up with their monthly mortgage payments. This is despite the client’s home not just being their biggest investment but also most likely to be the most important thing in their lives after their loved ones.

Buildings and contents insurance are crucial to financially protecting your clients and since buildings insurance needs to be in place before contracts are exchanged, mortgage advisers have the perfect opportunity to discuss it with their clients. However, home insurance is often overlooked by advisers for fear that they wouldn’t be able to match or beat prices offered by online aggregator sites that clients could source themselves. However, there really is no need to worry as long as you focus on the benefits of the policy and the advice you provide; Put simply, if you sell on price, you’ll lose on price.

Aside from home insurance, there’s arguably at least four other policies to protect the client from death, critical illness, accident, sickness and unemployment that should be in place before the client has a fully protected home. There remains a huge opportunity around accident, sickness and unemployment (ASU) cover since 23 per cent of people are concerned about the possibility of being made redundant by 2018 and 24 per cent are worried that they could be unable to work due to ill health in the next two years, but only two per cent of people already have protection for their income in place.

Take a typical 30-year-old male. According to research by Hannover Re, he has just a three per cent chance of dying, 11 per cent chance of suffering critical illness but a 27 per cent chance of being off work for two months or more. However, only eight per cent of this demographic has protection in place for their income. For women, the likelihood of being off work for two months or more increases to 44 per cent. Crucially, half of people say they couldn’t cope financially for more than three months without their usual salary, potentially falling into serious financial trouble should they have to rebuild or repair their home after serious damage.

As we know, no one can truly predict the future and, as such, it’s important that people are educated about the need to take out appropriate cover to protect them should things go awry. It’s the responsibility of advisers to provide this advice and sure their clients’ homes are fully protected.

Find resources to support your GI sales at www.paymentshieldadvisers.co.uk/toolkit.