Old Mutual Wealth is looking to update its critical illness product and expand its protection distribution team.
Paul Roberts, head of protection at Old Mutual Wealth, said the company’s offering had been “superseded” in recent years, prompting a review of protection products in the first part of 2017.
He said: “Moving into next year we are going to establish a new distribution team and we are looking to upgrade our core products, particularly our critical illness product.
“We are also looking to become more competitive on a pricing perspective then we have been before.
“Our critical illness product was considered by most people to be the leading one but we have been superseded so we are looking to review that in the first part of next year.”
Despite trying to make the product more competitively priced, Mr Roberts said Old Mutual Wealth would compete on “quality and flexibility”.
The new distribution team is expected to be in place for the beginning of January.
It will be a 12-strong team including four protection specialists and six consultants as well as Nigel Jeffries, the head of wealth specialists and the adviser sales centre.
Alan Lakey, founder of CIExpert, said: “Unlike other companies, they have not made any changes to their critical illness plan for more than two years, which is quite a long period.
“But the Old Mutual plan still stands up as one of the top four, which given that the market is progressing, shows you that it is very good.
“It is true to say it is behind on a couple of areas. The most significant area is the fact that they don’t offer a decreasing term option. They only offer level term.
“By not having a decreasing term option they are losing out on a significant amount of business.”
He added that a number of companies across the industry are adding more types of cancer into their critical illness policies, and this could be something Old Mutual might improve on.
damian.fantato@ft.com
