Expert insight, analysis and commentary across the entire protection industry.
by ProtectionReview 07/07/14
This is an ongoing debate, and it isn’t as black and white as some may portray. But that’s how as an industry we’re trying to approach it – Direct-to-consumer is cut back cover, inferior definitions and cheap, versus the gold plated benefit and feature rich cover that can ‘only’ be sold with advice. Richard Verdin was quoted in the Financial Adviser (29/05/14) saying ‘Direct-to-Consumer products need to be off the shelf and complement advisors offerings’ …. ‘Insurers need to stop modifying existing advisor sold products and start selling products that complement advisor offerings, like an off the rack M&S suit …
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by ProtectionReview 24/06/14
Hopefully the title has caught your attention, but don’t worry this is the one blog written in June that has no connection whatever with the World Cup and its ‘Group of death’. Rather it is about a potential role of group protection products through working life, into retirement, and finally into care, and the landscape such products could soon be operating within. The demise of so called ‘gold standard’ defined benefit (DB) pension schemes has led to much burning of the late night oil across Government as to where to go from here to make sure that people, in support…
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by ProtectionReview 22/05/14
OK, it’s hardly likely that a B2B blog like this is going to be drenched in emotion of any kind – joy, anger, misery, fear. (Well, perhaps a trace of fear as the deadline looms ever larger.) But as far as I can see, flicking back over a couple of dozen contributions, I don’t think it shows any real trace of emotion at all – and, more importantly, the same can be said of a very great deal of our marketing and communications activity. And in an area where consumers’ thoughts and feelings are so saturated with the stuff, that…
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by ProtectionReview 15/05/14
Mind the Gap We’ve heard the warning before, indeed, those of us who travel by public transport, and I’m thinking specifically about the London Tube, hear it most days. And we usually do, mind it that is, step carefully and avoid breaking our legs down between the platform and the train’s threshold. But what about the ’protection gap’? We’ve heard this warning plenty of times as well, but it is still the case that the UK is woefully underinsured in the area of income protection, as we step blithely and heedlessly over that particular metaphorical gap. There have been recent…
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by ProtectionReview 14/05/14
London 18 March 2014 More than two thousand people recently packed out Methodist Central Hall in London to hear a talk by Daniel Kahneman, Nobel prize winner and father of behavioural economics. I was fortunate enough to be one of them. These are my notes. Kahneman began by stating that writing his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, had not been an enjoyable experience. He did not expect to sell many copies. He has been surprised by its success. In the UK more than one million copies have been sold. (In France, on the other hand, sales are nearer six thousand…
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