"When we talk about ‘informed choice’, we mean ensuring customers understand the policy features and benefits, including frequency of claims, relevant to their lifestyle and needs."
Income Protection (IP) has a simple purpose – to protect someone’s income if they can’t work due to ill-health or injury. However, choosing the right policy requires knowledge, insight, and understanding. It should reflect an individual’s needs, circumstances, and responsibilities.
“Protection is far from a commodity that can be plucked boxed-ready off the shelf.”
That’s why Cirencester Friendly only accepts business from Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulated intermediaries, and solely on an advised basis. We work with advisers to ensure they can articulate the unique features of our products to customers, not just pitch on price. While there’s no doubt that price is important, protection needs to be accessible.
When we talk about ‘informed choice’, we mean ensuring customers understand the policy features and benefits, including the frequency of claims, relevant to their lifestyle and needs. When buying any financial product, it’s vital you know all the facts.
“Arguably, this is more crucial when purchasing IP; failure to select the right plan could impact not just you, but your family.”
We want advisers to know what we’re good at, so we decided to provide as much detail around our claims figures as possible. If an adviser is going to recommend our products, they need to know how our claim processes will fit with their customer's lifestyle, occupation, and ambitions.
READ MORE: Cirencester Friendly publish claim figures to help advisers & customers make an ‘informed choice’
Whilst I think the industry has improved, in terms of assisting advisers and their customers with making an informed choice, there’s always more to be done. It’s still the case that many advisers have to justify why they’ve not selected the cheapest product. Shouldn’t it be the other way round?
“Without pre-empting the FCA’s market study, it will be interesting to see their views on ‘choice’ with regard to restricted panels and premiums with loaded commission.”
Advisers don’t have time to examine every nuance of a product policy document, so providing quick and easy sales aids makes their lives easier.
Likewise, knowledgeable and motivated business development managers (BDMs) can make a huge difference. By taking the time to show advisers how to align product features with their customer's needs, they can ensure different options are both discussed and understood.
We could further improve dialogue around informed choice with more collaboration between providers, working together to grow knowledge and expertise. Naturally, we have to be mindful that providers are competitors, but my ambition is that we raise awareness of the good IP can deliver, as a collective.
