Aviva and Royal London have scooped gold medals in every category of F&TRC’s independent 2017 protection product provider ratings.
The providers came top in every category: business protection, business protection with critical illness, family income benefit, family income benefit with critical illness, life cover, life cover with critical illness, mortgage protection, mortgage protection with critical illness and relevant Life.
F&TRC’s ratings have been designed to help advisers understand which providers are offering the most suitable and comprehensive protection products and assist them with their client recommendations.
Each provider has been awarded either a gold, silver or bronze medal for both their overall proposition as well as in several important underlying categories.
The full ratings are as follows:
Gold | Silver | Bronze | |
Business Protection | AIG, Aviva, Legal & General, Royal London, Zurich | LV=, Scottish Widows, Vitality | Aegon |
Business Protection with Critical Illness | AIG, Aviva (upgraded), Royal London, Vitality (Business Protection with booster), Zurich | Aviva, Legal & General, LV=, Scottish Widows | Aegon |
Gold | Silver | Bronze | |
Family Income Benefit | Aviva, LV=, Royal London | AIG, Scottish Widows, Vitality | Aegon, Legal & General, Zurich |
Family Income Benefit with Critical Illness | AIG, Aviva (upgraded), Royal London, Scottish Widows, Vitality (comprehensive with booster) | Aegon, Aviva, LV=, Vitality (primary without booster) | Legal & General, Zurich |
Life Cover | Aviva, LV=, Royal London | AIG, Scottish Widows, Vitality | Aegon, Legal & General, Zurich |
Life Cover with Critical Illness | AIG, Aviva (upgraded), Royal London, Scottish Widows, Vitality (comprehensive with booster) | Aegon, Aviva, LV=, Vitality (primary with booster) | Legal & General, Zurich |
Mortgage Protection | Aviva, LV=, Royal London, Scottish Widows | Vitality, Zurich | Aegon, Legal & General |
Mortgage Protection with Critical Illness | AIG, Aviva (upgraded), Royal London, Scottish Widows, Vitality (comprehensive with booster) | Aviva, LV=, Vitality (primary without booster), Zurich | Aegon, Legal & General |
Relevant Life | AIG, Aviva, Royal London, Scottish Widows, Vitality | LV=, Zurich | Aegon, Legal & General |
F&TRC has also produced one-page fact sheets for each product and provider, designed to give advisers a simple resource that can be used quickly to compare the relevant merits of each provider in each product area.
Ian McKenna, director of F&TRC said: “Protection is often the realm of a specialist adviser in many financial planning firms.
“Adviser firms who don’t have someone in-house dedicated to protection will struggle to give the best and most up-to-date advice and even those who are experts may find it hard to keep up with every provider’s offering in the many types of products that are available.
“We have designed our ratings to make sure advisers have a tool, created with metrics they have told us are important to them, to answer their Protection advice questions quickly and easily.”
Roy Mcloughlin, associate director at London-based Cavendish Ware, commented: “F&TRC’s Protection Ratings give advisers a valuable overall assessment of a provider’s protection products and, when combined with their factsheets, create a simple one-page summary of the key strengths of different providers.”
simon.allin@ft.com