A service from Protection Guru, that allows advisers to compare the quality of life insurance policies, has seen a 60 per cent increase in use, as the industry ramps up its consumer duty preparation.
Protection Guru’s product feature report enables advisers to add quality comparisons of life insurance policies in addition to the more standard price comparisons.
The service is available free-of-charge as an additional service within iPipeline’s Solution Builder software.
Protection Guru’s founder and chief executive, Ian McKenna said the dramatic increase in the use of the service makes it clear that growing numbers of advisers are getting prepared to meet the new rules of the consumer duty, which comes into force at the end of July.
“This demonstrates firms are already embracing changes to their business processes in advance of the July 31 deadline,” McKenna said.
He explained that the service also provides various additional data with advisers able to choose up to five insurers or products to scrutinise for product and value.
“In the first four months of this year nearly 20,000 product features reports have been generated so this is a very sound statistical sample to work on,” McKenna said.
According to Protection Guru the most popular life insurers included as one of the five preferred companies named by financial advisers were Legal & General, Aviva and Zurich.
- Legal & General was included in 56.5 per cent of all product features reports
- Aviva was included in 51.2 per cent of all product features reports
- Zurich was included in 42.1 per cent of all product features reports
No other company made in to more than 40 per cent of reports across all products, Protection Guru has said.
For income protection providers, the top three were Legal & General, Aviva and LV.
- Legal & General was included in 54.1 per cent of all product features reports
- Aviva was included in 47.8 per cent of all product features reports
- LV was included in 40.4 per cent of all product features reports
“It is unusually to see a smaller player like LV make it into the top three for income protection which a growing number of advisers rightly see as the cornerstone of protection,” McKenna said.
He added: “This validates the independence of the advice market and shows firms selecting according to specific client needs."
jane.matthews@ft.com
