Covid-19 has affected us all, in every way. Our family, our work, our finances, and our general mindset.
But what has been the impact on the protection market and the way customers think about their protection needs? In a recent adviser survey, we asked you how Covid was affecting your clients’ attitudes to protection.
- A huge 75% of you said clients were more willing to talk about protection. Covid has opened their eyes to the very real risk that illness or death could happen to them.
- What’s more, 83% of you who said you don’t always talk about protection are now discussing it more frequently.
- And, in a major attitude shift, customers are calling you looking for protection – 39% of you told us you’d seen an increase in enquiries from existing customers, and 37% from new customers.
So, it’s clear that more families now understand the need for protection. And with the UK slowly starting to return to ‘normal’, now feels like a good time to have the protection conversation.
However, protecting people for right now is one thing; making sure that protection stays relevant for the future is another.
In the same survey, we asked you which of our features you valued the most, and in first place came our dual life approach. One of the most talked-about challenges we’ve brought to market is our approach to joint life policies – in that we don’t offer them at all. And that’s because we don’t believe they offer the best solution for clients in the long term.
With joint life two partners apply together – one quote, one app, one direct debit. But crucially, there will only be one payout. The policy ends after one claim and the other partner needs to reapply for cover. With dual life however, they apply together – again one quote, one app, one direct debit. But with this approach there could be two payouts because each partner is covered separately. That’s double the cover. We simply apply a multi-life discount to keep the price competitive.
When a couple divorce, dual life allows both to keep their cover. With joint life, they would need to reapply for new cover individually and, as we know, the older you get the more expensive it is. If you can get any at all. Some providers offer a separation option on joint policies, but they must be notified within 3 months of divorce.
We believe two is better than one, and if you explain the advantages of dual life to your clients, they’ll likely agree. However, if you need more convincing that Guardian’s Life Protection is the best solution for your clients’ protection needs, we have plenty more unique and worthwhile features. Market-leading terminal illness cover, optional children’s critical illness cover, Guardian Anytime – and that’s just for starters.
Discover more about our proposition at adviser.guardian1821.co.uk.
Source: Survey powered by Survey Monkey of 421 advisers by Guardian, from 14 April to 30 June 2020.
