Raising the profile of income protection

If you are familiar with The Muppets television show, you may remember two old codgers,Waldorf and Statler, who used to sit in a box overlooking the stage and heckle.

I was reminded of them this week when some remarks I made about the industry needing a “kick up the bum” got under the skins of some IFAs – good. I meant to ruffle some feathers in the discussion and I clearly did because in the comments under the reporter’s blog there were the usual remarks suggesting they had never heard of me (very sensible on their part), counselling that I would not be around very long and bemoaning the fact that I had probably never sold a policy in my life.

I thought it was rollicking stuff and I would have loved to exchange verbal blows but I did wonder if they were worth the bother. To put the record straight I have sold many policies to my friends (mainly what we called permanent health insurance then) in the days when amateurs could do that sort of thing.

Anyway the point of this article is not to refer back to these rather misinformed fellows but to highlight the discussion at the launch meeting of The Syndicate, the new industry research body, which was extremely interesting and very important. Some of the conclusions The Syndicate report came to was that the industry had to build a more robust online proposition and this meant streamlining processes.

One of the many very well-informed contributors to a very lively debate made a terrific point. He asked which other industry asks clients to “apply” to join.

This rather elitist stance suggested to him that people should feel rather privileged to be granted one of our products. I do not think we mean that when we refer to the application process but it is how obviously some people construe it.

My remarks about kicks in the rear end were intended to highlight the occasional apathy I encounter in industry meetings. I do not encounter much apathy in the protection adviser market because it is not all that big and most people I come across are top-quality professionals who take their position very seriously. I could (and would) recommend many of them to a friend or relative, indeed I have and they are not the people I was aiming the remarks at.

But at the same meeting an editor of one of the big protection publications revealed that only about 5 per cent of IFAs sold income protection.That is a very distressing figure on a number of levels because it suggests a real need to invigorate the adviser sector about the virtues of the product, something the Income Protection Task Force has tried hard to do.