"We’re committed to working with providers and advisers to speed up the underwriting process and avoid valuable time being lost."
- Paul Yates, Product Strategy Director at iPipeline
Of those surveyed (792), as part of iPipeline’s most recent study, 30% said they spend up to 2 hours a week on the phone with underwriters whilst 48% documented less than an hour spent on the phone. Annually, this equates to 52 to 104 hours per adviser. iPipeline believes these hours could have been spent advising to help build financially resilient households.
Worse still, 13% of respondents revealed that they spend 2 to 5 hours each week, and 3% spend over 5 hours weekly on the phone with underwriters. This means that more than one in ten advisers surveyed could be spending more than 250 hours on call to underwriters every year.
Despite the lack of efficient underwriting, advisers remain largely positive about the future. Of those surveyed (617), 30% gave a score of 10/10 when asked, how positive they were about the demand for protection advice over the next year. Notably, 74% gave a score of 8/10 or higher.
When asked how likely they were to be working as a protection adviser in the next five years, nearly half (47%) said it was extremely likely (10/10) followed by quite likely (78%) with scores of 8/10 or higher.
“Lengthy application processes and outdated approaches to underwriting can consume an adviser’s time, which is the most inefficient part of the protection sales process. An insurer needs to be able to assess risk but there must be more efficient ways to do it. Advisers should be spending their time advising customers, not chasing applications,” explained Roy McLouglin, Spokesperson for the Protection Distributors Group (PDG).
Paul Yates, Product Strategy Director at iPipeline, agreed that “More efficient underwriting appears to be a key area where we can make a difference. We’re committed to working with providers & advisers to speed up the underwriting process and avoid valuable time being lost.
“This data indicates that we have a highly motivated advice sector that could (and should) be empowered to advise and sell more protection policies,” he concluded.
