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Speaking at the 2009 Protection Review conference, held in London last week, David Heeney, chief marketing officer for UK and Ireland for Pacific Life Re, said other industries had seen "massive transformations" in the way products were brought to consumers.

With IFAs as its main distribution channel, Mr Heeney said the protection industry needed to adapt to the fact this could be severely disrupted in the coming years.

Addressing leading members of the protection industry, he said: "A lot of the most capable and the most experienced are in their 50s and it is not obvious where that succession is coming through.

"We have talked about effectively the death of the tied, tasked sales force, which often was the recruitment ground. The training ground for some of the leading IFAs has effectively dried up and it is not obvious where the succession is coming from.

"We rely on this, for our business 60 per cent of our sales, comes from this distribution model. It is not clear to me that this has moved on at the pace it needs to in order to compete with other industries as a way you bring your product to customers."

Mr Heeney said in the "new world of fee-based financial advice", which appeared to be focusing on high net-worth complex financial advice, it would be difficult for the existing protection distribution model to exist alongside it.

He said: "One way or another we have to find other ways of doing it."

Mr Heeney said there had already been some "interesting developments" with Aviva increasing its direct sales channel, Bright Grey launching a direct to customer offering and intermediary LifeSearch launching getliferight.co.uk, a website offering online quotes to customers.

He said: "I think we will see more of this, more in the way of new attempts to broaden and change to different distribution models. I think that is essential."

Martin Werth, managing director of Fortis Life UK, said more should be done to help IFAs, such as improving service to enable intermediaries to reduce their costs dedicated to chasing providers for information.

He said: "Often distributors have developed back-office support services to compensate for the inadequacies of insurers."

Tom Baigrie, managing director of LifeSearch, said consumers now responded more strongly to marketing, rather than sales and this was the tactic the protection industry should adopt.

He said: "By marketing brilliantly to consumers, distribution follows suit."