myi: Has the industry changed much since you first started out in protection insurance 25 years ago?
The most striking change has been technology. When I started there were no mobile phones, internet or even individual computers on desks. We had to work out life assurance quotes from rate books, get them typed up by the typists and then fax them out to advisers. Our sales consultants travelled around with a boot full of literature and kept in touch with the office by stopping at phone boxes.
Now of course we have instant access on the web to more information we can handle. We can do quotes instantly and we can communicate by mobile, email, twitter, linked in and by video call on Skype or FaceTime.
Despite this information overload, the main reasons why people don’t buy protection have stayed the same. People don’t think they need it, think it is too expensive and they don’t trust companies to pay claims. We needed IFAs to overcome these objections in a face to face meeting 25 years ago and we still need them today. Whilst consumers can and will buy direct I still think face to face advice is best.
myi: Why do you think protection sales are falling? What can advisers do to encourage more people to take out protection products?
People don’t like to buy protection at the best of times (i.e. when the economy is flourishing and they have spare cash). In the worst of times, when the economy dips in and out of recession and they have even less money to spend, protection falls even further down the list of priorities.
I think advisers already do a great job at encouraging more people to take out protection products.
Add to that my thoughts on the importance of face to face advice and the key becomes finding ways of getting more consumers to speak to IFAs. As providers, in addition to promoting our products to advisers, we need to be driving potential customers to advisers.
So if someone looking for life assurance finds the Bright Grey consumer website during a web-search – I want to make sure that the call to action they follow is to get in touch with an adviser.
myi: There has been talk of an annual protection awareness day. Do you think this is the way forward in highlighting the need for protection?
I am supportive of a protection awareness day but I do not think it replaces the need for providers to do more promotion of the sort that creates leads for advisers. We don’t all have the large budgets needed for TV advertising but these days I do not think you need to go that far. There is much potential on YouTube and we can use inbound marketing techniques to ensure that we are there when customers come looking rather than interrupting their lives with adverts and mailshots.
What I do not agree with is that every single company sends out an annual protection statement on the same day every year. While it would help to increase awareness it might also overload providers and advisers with queries from existing policy holders and in some cases require the whole initial advice process to be repeated for people who have forgotten why they bought something in the first place.
myi: Do you think there is a place for social media in financial services?
Absolutely. We ignore social media at our peril. If we do not use it, happy and unhappy customers will talk about us anyway. However, there are a lot of so called ‘social media experts’ out there who miss the point that social media forms part of an overall business strategy – it can be used in marketing, PR and in customer service. Get your overall business strategy nailed and the social media elements will fall into place easily.
myi: If you weren’t working in protection insurance what would you be doing?
I have been a fitness instructor for nearly ten years and I teach classes in Edinburgh and in 2010 I qualified as a Yoga teacher. If I wasn’t working in protection I’d probably be running a Yoga studio and helping fitness instructors put together their own business strategies which would of course include social media.
Roger Edwards is proposition director for Bright Grey and Scottish Provident, responsible for marketing, product development, and PR. Roger has been developing and marketing financial services products for nearly 20 years, specialising in protection products for the last 15. He was one of the founder members of the management team of Bright Grey which launched in 2003.
