|
|
The Life Insurance Market
|
Welcome all to the 7th LifeSearch Awards. It’s good to see so many of the protection industry’s most powerful people here, but also good to see so many of those who actually do the front line job at the insurers; those who directly help us get customers covered. You all do good work in the fine cause of helping individuals and families protect themselves against the worst.I think you and we, should be very proud of what we do.
Our industry mourns one of its old-school leaders. Simon Clamp fought for Aegon and most recently led Friends Provident’s protection business with real loyalty and great energy, during its toughest days. He will be sorely missed.
And for LifeSearch, this year has been darkened by the tragic death of our marketing director, Nick Crossman. Nick arrived in 1999 to manage our press advertising campaign. He saw us through the rise of online marketing and built the market leading system that delivers some 2-3000 leads a week, every week, to our advisers. Nick was simply excellent at his job and enormous fun with it. We miss him dreadfully.
________________________________________
Amongst you our insurer partners the last 12 months have seen real mprovement in service levels from you to us and our clients. Teleinterviewing has I think brought with it the understanding that technology can be profitably deployed as an enabler of good people, not just a destroyer of their jobs and you have used it to simplify and speed up much of what we do while allowing us to keep the personal touch that gets dozens of customers writing nice things about us each week.
And further congratulations are due to all providers for your ever-improving CIC claims paid stats. Urging you to publicise those was one of LifeSearch’s earliest campaigns and the oxygen of publicity has powered the paid percentage from levels around 70% to around 90%. And while LifeSearch can be proud of our foresight it’s you who have done the work and made this huge improvement. Well done and thank you! We are also delighted with the growing number of you who offer premium reductions when making exclusions. This is a real TCF sales aid and a sales aid that treats customers fairly is a perfect thing! More please.
But not all our campaigns have succeeded. While LifeSearch has had a strong year of growth, posting good profits and growing to a sales force now of 80 advisers, all of whom are better trained, coached, and managed than ever before; I personally failed to get the industry marketing itself properly to consumers. We perhaps did give protection marketing something of an adrenalin shot, for just as the whole industry decided not to spend £5m marketing protection, together, as something that consumers need, so Compare the Market have announced plans to spend the same amount marketing their life insurance as the cheapest. Not the same thing at all of course, but in this case any publicity is good publicity and despite my fears at the consumer outcomes achieved through non advised purchase, I’m pleased that someone will tell consumers that life insurance is still out there! The Meerkat’s boldness will aggravate a fine irony I’d ask you all to ponder for a moment. In 2010, seeking to regulate a financial services market without regulating its online outcomes is surely ridiculous. The vast majority of consumers who set out to learn about any particular aspect of financial services will type the words they think most relevant into their Google search bar. And if you look at keywords such as life insurance, and critical Illness you’ll find almost only non advised online sellers, and under Income Protection you’ll find only the disgraced tribe of PPI sellers, wearing a subtle disguise!
No matter their pros and cons, all of these provide a very different consumer solution from anything the FSA has ever sought to achieve. Now I don’t think the FSA can regulate Google, they are not the Chinese Government after all, but as these sites are not regulated in terms of the quality of outcomes they cause and the question I’d like you to think about, is this.
“If ever more consumers do most of their learning from sites whose consumer solutions lie outside the regulated world The FSA is regulating and protecting a rapidly shrinking proportion of all buying decisions each day. As this trend is continuing and accelerating, what is the point of having the retail firms side of the FSA at all?” To be clear, I’m really not calling for more regulation, but I am wondering where the rise of non-advice on-line leaves.a by-passed regulator?
But leaving aside the perverse and unintended consequences of regulation and the blistering competition now prevalent in our markets, LifeSearch continues to prove that specialisation, commitment and customer-focus make growth possible even in very harsh conditions. And so with brave hearts and no fear of the economic, political or regulatory future – for today at least - let’s recognise your achievements by telling you which of you the LifeSearch teams think are the best at what you do.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the LifeSearch Awards 2010!
Tom Baigrie
LifeSearch
--
0
comments:
-
Post your own comment
|
|
|