We spoke to Ronnie Taylor about the different ways Scottish Widows is supporting advisers in these challenging times through product enhancements and adviser support.
What product or service introductions have you made to support advisers growing their businesses?
At Scottish Widows we aim to deliver value for money products and services for both advisers and their clients, in a way that makes us easy to do business with. Two of the product initiatives we have introduced this year to support advisers and help them make the most of change are the launch of our Defined Benefits advice campaign and the simplification of our Retirement Account product charges. To take each of these in turn. We’re supporting advisers who are offering DB advice as part of their client offering in a number of ways. As well as our free TVAS report service, we’ve created a wealth of expert content to help at every stage in the process - including advice checklists, case studies, client guides, and a dedicated website. We have had fantastic feedback from advisers across the UK on this service and continue to see strong demand. We’re also committed to a straightforward approach to our product charges. This is why we provide full transparency on our charges, and for our flagship Retirement Account we have a single price with no additional or hidden fees. We have also led the industry by removing early exit fees across all our legacy personal pension plans, going above and beyond what is required of the industry. This allows customers to exercise their pension freedom rights or, if they want to switch to alternative products orproviders, they can now do so free of charge.
What about technical and specialist support to help advisers?
Alongside our value for money products, we offer expert support to provide deep knowledge and insight on the latest technical issues and industry legislation. We share this content through our bi-monthly TechTalk publication and external adviser roadshows and seminars. Adviser engagement with our technical content has grown significantly across 2016 and will continue throughout 2017. As well as providing advisers with expert support, our retirement hub was developed to support advisers when helping their clients through the retirement journey. The hub can offer a clear overview of a client’s retirement options. It’s also a useful source of information that an adviser can share with a client, giving them access to interactive case studies, tools and calculators and guides to how pensions work. And finally we’ve continually enhanced our protection proposition by being one of the first providers to send clients annual benefit statements for protection, helping you build value with clients and show the value of ongoing advice. In addition, we have recently announced that in 2016 we paid over 99% of life claims and over 93% of critical illness claims, further emphasising our continued commitment to helping as many individuals and their families through difficult times.
And finally, how will you continue to evolve this for advisers?
The best way we can increase the support we offer advisers is by listening to their opinions and feedback. We’ll continue to do this, and deliver great service and value for advisers and their clients. Most importantly, by making it as easy as possible to do business with us, we can help advisers spend more time with clients. Through our excellent product propositions, knowledgeable Business Development Manager sales teams and specialists, and by keeping things simple, we’ll continue to be the provider you can rely on.
Find out more at www.scottishwidows.co.uk/advisersupport
Ronnie Taylor is distribution director of Scottish Widows. Ronnie has a proven track record of leading distribution and marketing teams over his 29-year career in Financial Services. He joined Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) in October 2013 as pensions and investments director for Scottish Widows, where he led the proposition and distribution strategy for corporate and individual business. Now, as distribution director, Ronnie has responsibility for all of insurance distribution.
Sources: Scottish Widows
