"It is a collaboration between providers and intermediary firms which will be key to closing the protection gap."
FR: You joined The Exeter as its CEO in April 2021. How did you find the move across from Royal London?
Our sector is fantastically collaborative, but every organisation has its own culture and identity, so my main aim when joining The Exeter was to listen, learn and understand exactly how we do business. I saw a number of changes while working with Royal London, and I believe that taking the time to get to know how things work before making any changes yields the best results for the company and its people.
Since joining, I have met most of the brilliant people that make The Exeter what it is. Though working from home guidance meant we couldn’t meet in person, there were benefits to being able to virtually sit down with colleagues quite quickly after I joined.
FR: What have been your main priorities since joining The Exeter?
As mentioned, my priority was to listen and get to know our teams, but once I had a good understanding of this, my thoughts naturally turned to our future strategy. Andy Chapman was a brilliant CEO, and through his leadership, the business grew hugely over the last decade. So, as the incoming CEO, I knew we needed to keep building on that, but we also needed to reflect and acknowledge that the business continues to change. Not only have we grown in terms of the new business volumes that we write, and the number of intermediaries we support, but the pandemic has also fundamentally changed how we work.
One of my main aims, when we started thinking about strategy, was to make sure we were communicating clearly about our plans and ambitions. To continue our growth, we need to make the most of the skills and knowledge of our existing team members and complement them with new colleagues and skillsets that further strengthen the company.
FR: Looking forward, what is The Exeter focused on?
We want to maintain our growth but do it sustainably. It’s not a massive change of direction, and the team knows that. Our purpose and vision are more about being clear on who we are and why we are good at what we do. At The Exeter, we put our intermediary customers and members at the heart of everything we do, and this approach will remain central to our strategy in the future.
Technology is also a key focus area for us. As a smaller organisation, we don’t struggle with the same legacy systems that larger businesses might, so that really helps when we consider our digital strategy. The pandemic has again shown us that the desire to use technology is there. We currently receive almost 50% of GP reports digitally, whilst the usage of our health and wellbeing app for members, HealthWise, continues to grow year on year. This gives us a huge amount of scope for using technology more widely going forward.
FR: What are we likely to see in the wider market?
Awareness-raising will continue to be hugely important. We’ve seen some great things with Income Protection Awareness Week and research compiled by various providers, but we can’t take our eye off the ball.
Greater awareness of the benefits of protection and a smoother more predictable customer experience will be key to removing the barriers to writing protection. We need to work closely with intermediaries to support their processes. It is a collaboration between providers and intermediary firms which will be key to closing the protection gap.
This year the protection industry won’t benefit from the stamp duty holiday that helped boost the housing market during the pandemic. Add to this the cost-of-living squeeze that we are starting to see impact households, and protection becomes an even harder sell to make. But if the past two years have shown us anything, it’s that the industry is extremely resilient and meets any challenges it faces head-on.
FR: If you could read one headline about protection in 2022, what would it be?
That we have increased sales and therefore the number of customers who have the peace of mind that protection gives them.
