Aviva chief Andy Briggs has revealed his leadership of the Association of British Insurers will see it tackle the advice gap head on this year.
Speaking it the ABI’s annual conference in London today (27 February) the ABI (pictured) said the trade body had made it one of its priorities for the coming year to achieve change in this area.
The chief executive of Aviva told his peers: “We need to act to ensure consumers get appropriate access to guidance and advice on their savings and investments that’s no easy task. It’s a critical challenge that we must take on.”
He called on insurers to work with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to work out how to best serve their clients.
He said: “We as an industry need to talk to the FCA [to get answers to] the questions we get from customers that we just can’t answer, simple things that will make a difference to customers and the FCA in their paper on Friday (23 February) really starts to answer some of those questions.”
The FCA policy statement gave fresh guidance on what the regulator would view as a personal recommendation, in a bid to deal with concerns raised as part of the Financial Advice Market Review process from some in the industry that firms were deterred from providing services to help customers because of uncertainty around what would constitute advice, and all associated liability.
Mr Briggs said the ABI had identified three areas of concern going forward: ageing and longevity; customer engagement and digitisation; and diversity and inclusion in insurance firms.
He said: “It seems to me our world continues to change ever faster around us. We are in the midst of a digital revolution which to my mind is the greatest macro trend we have seen in a long time.
He said data and cybercime were the top risks to firms’ security.
“Digitisation represents a big opportunity but also a big challenge, it will affect all aspects of our work and all touch points from customer relationships to underwriting to marketing. We need to get it right.
“People living longer is the other great macro trend facing us.”
Illustrating the longevity trend, he said in 1917, when the British monarchy started sending telegrams to centenarians, it sent 24 telegrams. This year the Queen will send 10,000 letters.
Despite auto-enrolment people are still not saving enough for their retirement, he said, which was where better access to guidance and advice was needed.
“We need to engage and communicate more with customers,” he said.
But the industry also needed to continue to adapt and change, especially in terms of diversity and inclusion.
The ABI found in a recent survey four in five insurers had a diversity strategy in place but this had not yet evidenced itself in practice, where only small numbers of women, for instance, were in leading positions at insurance firms.
“For me inclusion and diversity is fundamental to a successful business. [It means we can] better represent our customers and the communities we represent,” Mr Briggs said.
But Mr Briggs said the insurance industry had “much to be proud of”.
Insurance adds £40bn a year to the economy and employs 300,000 people in 145 communities across the country, as well as being the UK’s third largest export industry, he pointed out.
He added: “2017 was not easy and I suspect 2018 will not be any easier but we have to hold that core purpose central to what we are as an industry to providing peace of mind to our customers, enabling them to invest, to protect and to have peace of mind.”
carmen.reichman@ft.com
