He stressed that by not taking up the opportunity to discuss insurance products, advisers were both missing out on an opportunity and leaving a consumer to make a potentially ill-informed decision.
Kelly noted:
"General insurance is one of those products that people think they're informed about - but they're absolutely not. I say that comparison sites have convinced a generation that they understand home insurance.
“If I went to everyone in this room and asked you what security you have on your property, I imagine most would look at me with a blank face and say - “It's a yellow lock”. And yet we expect customers to go online to comparison sites and look after themselves when buying general insurance. Is that really an informed client? Is that the best way for you to be looking after your clients? I would argue that it’s not.”
Kelly quoted a statistic – that one in 10 mortgages have a GI sale attached - and called this gap a ‘huge opportunity’ for advisers.
"The truth is, you're not maximizing your opportunity. Advisers know better than anyone how difficult it is to get someone into your business - so why would you put in all that effort, all that hard work ,all that money, to then not talk about the other propositions that are available? Whether that be protection, general insurance, equity release – there are so many opportunites for advisers.”
He also noted that longer-term fixed rates meant many advisers were missing key opportunities to discuss protection or GI products with their clients – citing the example of a five-year fixed mortgage as a time period where clients might have had one or more children, amongst other life changes, without contact from their mortgage adviser.
He added:
“And how many people in that five-year period have reached out, if I’m the client in this scenario? How many opportunities have they lost out on for the sake of speaking to me every, 12 months or two years? There's a life cover opportunity, because I've now got a child. There’s room to talk about health benefits like GP 24/7, which is available on some protection products. There’s critical illness cover for children – but I’ve got no idea about this. So it’s a huge missed opportunity - for both the adviser and the consumer - when it could have taken one conversation.”
Mortgage Adviser Event takes place in Glasgow, London and Manchester each year – advisers can pre-register for the London event taking place in May here.
