Brief encounter

9 February 2010 8:00 am

I think my friends are interesting but, on hearing this story, you may not. Over Christmas, I was reflecting on the Noughties. One of my friends suggested that, having been given an MBE for services to protection insurance, how would I react if someone gave me a Government brief to revive protection in the UK?

I thought about this brief for a while and made three points. First, I would just be delighted that the Government was aware enough of the issue to take this sort of action.

One of the big problems is that very few people see the lack of protection as having the potential to create many vulnerable families. They see it in terms of why should fat cat insurers be helped to sell policies they are very reluc-tant to pay claims on? The very fact that the public (and parts of the Government) feel this way illustrates why it is a problem that does need attention. I was interested to hear that a major rein-surer had a very positive discussion with the Chan-cellor of the Exchequer a few months ago about the implications of the protection gap. That is intriguing.

Second, the industry has just missed a big opportunity to do something about awareness by rejecting the next phase of the consumer protection and insurance engagement campaign. Whether you were a fan of CPIEC or not, let no one be in any doubt that, without this sort of campaign, it will be enormously difficult to get the public’s ear. Therefore, any brief to spread understanding about protection would depend on producing an information/ awareness campaign. Can you see the Government sanctioning the spending of public money on this sort of campaign when the industry has previously refused to finance one? No, me neither.

The final thing I would do is to determine who within the protection market really cares about the lack of penetration by the industry as a whole and who is content that it remains undersized if they remain at the top of it. It is rather like refusing promotion to the Premier League so you can win the Championship (or more accurately the Rymans Premier Division) every season.

Yet this is very much an attitude I sense in our industry among some (although thankfully not all) players. We can hardly expect the public to respond to a clarion call when parts of the industry have cotton wool in their ears.

You will have seen by now the ambitious plans we have for the protection review. This is based on a belief that promoting awareness and searching for excellence in the protection industry are goals profoundly worth focusing on. I have to believe this is right. What would it say about our industry if we were wrong?

Peter Le Beau is managing director of Le Beau Visage

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