Protection Update 3rd December 2021
Protection Update 3rd December
Hi everyone, welcome to this week’s protection update Friday 3rd December 2021.
It’s exactly that time of year where there is a deadline in sight in a few weeks in the shape of Christmas, so there’s lots to do and lots to get across the line before everything shuts down when Christmas arrives.
But, we’re not there yet and there is still a lot going on.
iPipeline Risk Reports
First thing I want to talk about today; you should have seen a communication from iPipeline this week talking about some new ‘Risk Reports’ which are not available via the standard Solution Builder Platform. Thank you to Claire Shine at iPipeline for sending me a note asking me to mention this in this week’s protection update.
I’ve added a link to this protection update which will give you access to these new risk reports and I’m going to demonstrate exactly what you have to do to create these risk reports. They are only going to be ‘free to use’ for the next few months.
So, firstly, click on the link on this protection update.
Sign up for Free personalised Protection Risk Reports
You’ll see this registration page. Enter your details (name and contact information).
That’s all you have to do and you’ll have access to these different risk reports. What I would suggest is that you bookmark this page so you can return back to it again and again. Otherwise, it won’t be so easy to find.
The risk reports are:
- Re-mortgage Risk Report
- Self Employed Risk Report
- Life & CIC Risk Report
Let’s take a look at the Re-mortgage Risk Report.
You have to enter some basic information about your clients – this will be information you already have such as how much is the mortgage, what’s the term, and details about the clients themselves.
When we generate the risk report, it’s portrayed in a similar way to what you’ve seen on the mortgage and risk report, but there’s a clearer reminder about the provisions they don’t have.
So on my example, I’m saying the client doesn’t have any cover and you can see this shown at the top of the report.
Again, you get the 1 in 10, 2 in 5 chances shown on the report and you also get those indicative premiums from Solution Builder built into the report.
Again, if we take a look at the Self-Employed Risk Report, this one is a little bit different.
And you don’t have to enter a lot of information to create it.
What you see here is a reminder at the top about what provisions a typical employed person would have access to; a Self-Employed worker would not and I think that is quite powerful.
You can see here that reminder about Statutory Sick Pay – self-employed don’t get that.
Income Protection, Critical Illness and Life Assurance can, potentially be provided as an employee benefit. But that simply isn’t possible for a self-employed worker so again, I think it’s quite powerful to be able to portray the amount of covers they are missing out on by being a self-employed worker.
And again of course, you get the normal risk probability and the indicative costings.
So take a look and see what you think.
I know lots of you do use risk reports, so please take a look and see if you like these new reports and of course, let me know.
Vitality – Earnings Guarantee on Personal Protection
Now this week, Vitality have launched a new ‘Earnings Guarantee on Personal Protection’ – this is specific to Income Protection.
Effectively what this means is that for income protection benefit up to £1500 per month; when a customer makes a claim, their salary won’t be taken into account when calculating the maximum benefit payable.
There are other providers that do this.
But what Vitality are doing a little bit differently is they’ve also built in is something to tackle benefit amounts above £1500 and up to £8000 per month.
For those situations, the client will have the flexibility to verify their earnings within the first 6 months of the plan and when they do, that guarantees that benefit amount.
Now we know that different providers have different maximum income protection limits, but we know that 50% is a level which pretty much every provider will offer income protection cover.
So £8000 a month is £96,000 per annum. That’s income protection benefit.
And if that equates to 50% of someone income; that provides guaranteed income protection cover for incomes of up to £192,000.
Not bad?
I’ve added a link to the vitality sales aid which gets into that detail and a few other really useful features too.
Protection Guru link on Adviser site
And finally, have you noticed the big Protection Guru logo on the adviser site?
If you’re not using Protection Guru, you are missing out.
It’s free to sign up to and whenever I’ve got a query about anything protection related; that’s usually my first port of call.
For example, just this week, Protection Guru have run an article all about the Insurers who include Trauma benefit on Income Protection Plans… do you know who those providers are? No, neither do I but knowing where I can find out within about 5 seconds is quite handy to know.
What about the very latest state of play regarding Covid. Do you know which insurers currently apply covid exclusions to Income Protection? Again, if you don’t, they published an article on Tuesday this week.
And the Vitality upgrade I’ve just talked about. Protection Guru did an article about that on Tuesday but also delved a little deeper to talk about the other providers who have similar stances within their propositions.
So, it’s a wonderful resource to have access to Protection Guru.
I’ve added a link to this week’s protection update so if you haven’t already registered; click on the link and do so. It will only take you a few minutes.
