Hi everyone and welcome to this week’s protection update.
It’s always a risk running webinars in the middle of summer because lots of people are on holiday but if you are available, we are running our last ‘CIC under the Bonnet’ webinar on Tuesday next week.
Next week we’ve got Guardian, HSBC Life and LV= who will be giving us a look at their Critical Illness Proposition from a technical point of view in terms of things that make the difference when it comes to making claims.
And also joining us on the session is Paul from CIExpert who will be giving his own critique on each provider’s proposition.
We ran one of these this week and I think the format worked well with those differing points of view, but the whole thing was informative and interesting.
So, if you’ve not registered, I’ve added the registration link to this week’s protection update. It would be great to see you there – 10am to 11.45, Tuesday 23rd August next week.
Income Protection Champion update
Now let’s take a look at how we’re doing with the Income Protection Champion competition.
We have had some movement in the top 10 advisers.
In no particular order, I want to give a shout out to our top 10 advisers in the leading pack:
| Karla Edwards | The Protection parent |
| Laurence Hoffman | advantage |
| Andrew Russell | Mortgage Quest |
| Ciara Coyle | The Local NI Broker |
| James Groom | Wolsey Mortgage Company |
| Jordan Galloway | JG Financial |
| Gary Hobbs | Spartan |
| Lee Arundell | JBM Mortgage Brokers |
| Philip Lee | Meridian Financial Planning |
| Thea Cox | Thea Cox |
Now that’s just the top 10 but there are another 30 plus advisers who are not too far away and are in with a shout.
Now interestingly, the whole point of this competition is to shine a light on Income Protection and the need for it.
Did you know that if you wanted to buy an income protection policy; you would have to go through an intermediary. These aren’t available directly to the public without any financial advice so if we’re not talking about it, it’s a difficult thing for your customers to obtain.
Now here’s the challenge…
Around 470 advisers within the network have sold at least 1x life policy this year.
400 advisers within the network have sold at least 1x protection policy that includes critical illness cover.
But around 270 advisers within the network have not sold even 1x income protection policy this year.
Hence, this is how we can do better and demonstrate our professionalism in an area where A) it’s potentially the biggest risk our clients face b) customers don’t often realize there is a great solution available and C) they can only get it through you.
I caught up with our National Account Manager from British Friendly this week and I asked him about why we sometimes weight our protection advice to life cover and critical illness cover… what about income protection?
Adam from British Friendly
Adam Segment
I’ve added a link to that case study that Adam mentioned there. It’s a video and its well worth a watch.
Sales Opportunity with Royal London?
Now here’s a plug for our product forums. We’ve got a product forum for each of our different product propositions and it’s a place on the adviser site where you can ask questions and find things out about that product area.
It can be an incredibly powerful tool – if you use it!
I posted sales idea on the protection forum this week about a sales opportunity specific to Royal London and indexation.
https://rightmortgageadviser.com/forums/topic/royal-london-indexation-instant-pay-rise/
I’ve added a link to this week’s protection update, but here’s how it goes…
What would you prefer, if you went off work sick and had to claim on your income protection policy for a while, would you like a pay rise on what you receive, or no pay rise?
And if you would like your replacement income to go up each year just like a pay rise; would you like it to keep track of this incredibly high inflation we’re experiencing at the moment?
Well, you know that if you recommend a Royal London Income Protection policy and add indexation with RPI; that’s what it aims to do.
But where it’s a bit quirky is that each policy anniversary; they will write to the customer and explain what the new premium will be and what the new level of cover will be.
The client doesn’t have to accept the increase. But if they do, they will pay a bit more and they will have more cover.
But if the client chooses not to increase their cover, but they make a claim at some point in the future; the income that is paid to them will increase by the indexation amount after each year of claim.
If you’ve chosen RPI, that would see the policy sum assured income increase by around 10% as it stands at the moment because we know inflation is high and RPI is currently running at over 10% right now.
There is usually a 10% cap on the amount a policy can increase by with most life offices and that is the case with Royal London.
So, that’s delivering a good outcome for the customer. They make a claim and their benefit amount keeps track with inflation (or RPI up to a maximum of 10%).
But, they might never have increased their policy when they were invited to.
Because they added indexation on a Royal London policy; they effectively bought a guaranteed increase to any future claims.
And, one more thing which is worth mentioning is that the commission paid is much higher when you add indexation.
In a high inflation environment, like we are seeing at the moment; this is an especially useful angle to deliver a decent quality solution to your customer.
Now this same principle works for other protection covers too such as life cover, critical illness cover or family income benefit.
The client doesn’t have to take the increases – but adding indexation gives them that choice.
That’s it from me for another week.
I hope to see you at our CIC under the Bonnet webinar next Tuesday. In the meantime, have a great weekend and I’ll see you soon.
Register now to our end of summer webinars and roadshows!
