There are also many added benefits for protection clients not making a claim. Mutual insurers like LV= offer member benefits, including free advice on matters ranging from legal issues to relationship or bereavement counselling, and discounts on products such as car or home insurance.
Other insurers such as PruProtect offer lifestyle benefits including gym membership and reward programmes for being healthy, to discounted family days out and free cinema tickets, giving people something tangible for their monthly premium.
3. Value for money
On average the UK offers some of the cheapest protection premiums in the world. For a young family to cover the financial risk of suffering a major illness, dying or being injured in an accident the cost of protection is very accessible indeed.
A very competitive marketplace has ensured that costs are driven down in consumers’ interests and protection often costs a lot less than people think. The average premium a customer of protection specialist LifeSearch pays is just £26 a month, a lot less than people presume cover costs.
4. Paid claim statistics
Recent figures from the ABI show that the protection industry pays out £6m a day in life cover, income protection and critical illness claims.
Campaigns began for insurers to publish their claims data in around 2004, a time when the media seemed to be full of declined claims stories week in week out, damaging the public’s perception of our industry.
Today, the majority of providers publish claims statistics each year for life cover, critical illness and more recently income protection. This gives advisers the ability to show clients that the majority of claims are paid - around 90 per cent of claims are paid on average each year - and where claims are not paid, advisers can clearly explain why.
This obviously helps clients see the importance of issues such as non-disclosure and understand better what they are and are not covered for. This has been a great step forward in our industry being more open and honest, enabling consumers to have confidence in us.
5. Multi-plans
Scottish Provident was the first company to launch a multi-benefit protection plan back in 1999 and we’ve seen many insurers follow suit since. Multi-plans have been a great addition to our industry, offering often a more cost effective and less time consuming process for the adviser and the client.
If someone is taking out life cover, income protection and critical illness cover a multi-plan means there is only one company to deal with, only one application to complete and one set of medical questions to answer, rather than repeating the process with a different insurer for each product.
