Getting the message across

16 February 2010 8:00 am

There is consternation among the protection fraternity at the moment about how to get the message about the need for our products into the minds of the general public.

The consumer protection insurance engagement campaign had aimed for an industrywide effort to get together the funds for a media push, warning of the dangers of not having adequate cover, but was unable to ultimately bring the scheme to fruition.

The main reason for this seems to be that the various factions could not agree on the key messages, aims and outcomes of the campaign - not surprising given the healthily competitive nature of the various insurers and distributors involved.

The dilemma is who now picks up the baton - is there an organisation large, independent and well enough funded to really get to grips with promoting protection to the UK?

It is worth looking at how other industries boost sales of a particular product line. Supermarkets, for example, are adept at positioning products alongside related purchases and ensuring that the most commonly bought items are not easily accessible, so as to prolong the length of time a customer is in the store and increase their propensity to buy more goods.

Online aggregators are also slick when it comes to cross-selling, knowing that a shopper who bought product A via them will be susceptible to an approach regarding products B and C.

This points to the nub of the issue within protection, and possibly a fundamental flaw in the CPIEC effort - if our current advice process is not functioning as effectively as it should, and vital cross-selling opportunities are being missed, what good would pushing more leads into the front end achieve?

What we need to do is to upskill our existing advice force, train or retrain those new or returning to the industry and insist on a core level of competency for those offering protection products.

We are lucky that in our corner of the market we have a great many organisations and bodies concerning themselves with solving the issues which prevent the sale of protection.

It is time that all these parties pulled together in the spirit which got CPIEC off the ground in the first place, with the Association of British Insurers the logical choice to spearhead pushing things forward.

This, coupled with the continuing and concerted efforts to make the sale and underwriting of protection as smooth and simple as possible (particularly with a view to helping IFAs returning to advising on life cover due to the possibility of commission income) is what will really get advisers, and, by extension their customers, engaged.

Phil Jeynes is head of new business at Direct Life & Pension Services

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