FTA: What else are you doing to help clients at this vulnerable time?
PH: We have created as much additional flexibility as we can. For example, along with many others in the industry, we introduced the ability to defer premiums.
Initially we did this for three months in May last year but as it became clear that the pandemic was continuing, then, on a rolling basis, we have extended this additional flexibility.
This is not an indefinite premium holiday, and the take-up has been modest, which is a good thing because now, more than ever, someone's protection plan is important.
More than 50 per cent of people who came to the end of the three-month period have already paid [their premiums] back and this is encouraging, because it reflects a recognition that the client sees the value of protection insurance.
We also created more flexibility even with the deferred premium, to allow people to temporarily reduce their sum assured to decrease their premium, and then to restore it at a later time without underwriting
We need to make life easier at a difficult time.
FTA: Has Covid-19 made selling protection easier?
PH: People have talked about whether it will be easier to have protection conversations going forward.
If you are an adviser, the idea that 'it won't happen to me' was historically a challenge to overcome in protection conversations. But I think those conversations will be just a little bit easier now, because people will feel vulnerable in one way or the other.
It is fairly tragic that this sense of fear has been necessary to reaffirm what they probably already knew in the backs of their minds – that they are not as financially resilient as they might once have thought.
FTA: How can insurers and brokers prove you are looking after the client's best interests?
PH: There is no doubt that some of the stories coming out on some declined business claims may have dented people's confidence.
It is hard for individual customers to differentiate between insurers when they hear a bad claims story, and they don't often differentiate between different types of insurance.
So there is more we need to do to restore that trust and faith. We need to highlight the importance of the volume of claims paid across the board.
We, along with rest of the industry, have paid billions of pounds' worth of claims over the past year, in general insurance and life.
Along with advisers, we should be hugely proud of how we’ve stayed open for business and paid claims that have made a huge difference to thousands of lives.
