Covid 19 brought perspective around health and resulted in more openness to the ‘what if’ conversations that are needed to discuss protection. However, the current cost of living crisis and ongoing economic uncertainty continues to create a number of challenges for advisers.
According to Iress research 50% of advisers said that the rising cost of living was causing their clients to reconsider or cut back on their protection policies (The Iress Protection Survey 2022). Additionally, The latest AMI viewpoint report (the great protection shift) shows that, alarmingly, more than a third of advisers are not doing anything to help keep their customers protected during the current cost of living crisis.
As an industry we have to address these facts and concerns and hopefully Consumer Duty will be a catalyst for change and technology has its part to play.
Giving advisers better clarity on protection products
Features is the result of extensive work with the industry to standardise product providers’ specific interpretations of protection features and introduce standardised definitions that make it easier for advisers to understand and compare products.
Following on from the launch of Features across Income Protection and Term & Critical Illness, advisers can now also compare product features for all Multi-benefit products. This further enhancement means that feature information is displayed on over 500 products across the services.
With Features, protection products are no longer displayed by price alone but with additional information on the depth of cover and any additional features that products come with, which may be unique to a provider.
Free for all Exchange users, Features allows advisers to perform like-for-like comparisons against all providers as well as create feature comparisons reports for these products giving a clear, detailed view of which is right for their clients.
With the introduction of Product Features on Multi-benefit products, Iress is bringing together all the product features for both Income Protection and Term & Critical Illness benefits allowing Advisers to compare up to 18 product features in two simple to use feature comparison reports.
With the introduction of Product Features on Multi-benefit products, Iress is bringing together all the product features for both Income Protection and Term & Critical Illness
Iress’s Global Head of Product, Life, Pensions & Mortgages, Jacqueline Durbin said, “Price is of course as ever an important factor, especially in the current economic climate but Protection conversations need to go beyond price and technology can help in making conversations between advisors and clients as easy as possible, turning the conversation from price to value and continuing to support advisers efficiently and accurately researching the best cover for their clients needs. Having feature comparisons at their fingertips and alongside their traditional price comparison research will help enable this and I'm delighted that the feedback we have had so far demonstrates how beneficial this is proving.”
Find out more
Talk to your Iress account manager or contact sourcing@iress.com to find out more.
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