Kathryn (00:06):

Hi everybody. We are on season eight, episode one of the Practical Protection Podcast, and we are back after the summer of 2023 and kicking things off with the co-chairs of the IPTF. So I have Jo Miller, Katie Cook Davis, and Andrew Wiley with me. Hi everyone.

Andrew (00:22):

Hello

Katie (00:23):

Everyone.

Kathryn (00:24):

Hi. We are going to be talking about the IPTF, what it is that they do, what they’re trying to achieve in the industry, what they’re seeing in the industry, and their upcoming IPO week, which is going to be an incredible success just like it was last year. This is the Practical Protection Podcast. So how is everybody doing today? Are we all all right?

Katie (00:56):

Yeah, well thank you. Yeah.

Andrew (00:58):

Yes, very good. Thank you.

Kathryn (00:59):

Fantastic.

Jo (01:00):

Be bad at all.

Kathryn (01:01):

Fantastic. So I believe we have IPO coming up incredibly soon. I imagine everything is quite tense right now. Lots of logistics going around the place, but also very, very exciting for you all.

Jo (01:15):

I was going to try and say, of course it’s all organized, it’s absolutely fine. But no, the weeks running up to IPA are a little bit frantic, but hopefully that means the IPO week itself is fantastic. So here’s hoping.

Kathryn (01:29):

I’m sure it will be. I know you were, it was a complete, as I say, logistical feat last year, so well done with that. So let’s get straight into things. I think quite important is that we do see things on different social media and through account managers we hear lots and lots about IPTF or the Income Protection Task Force, but not everybody will have done, and so it’s good idea. Probably just give everyone a bit of a background. So kind of like what is IPTF? What’s its purpose, Katie, I know you’ve got quite a good background on that for us,

Katie (02:00):

Right. I’ll kick off the IPTF, which it stands for the Income Protection Task Force, which sounds like a very big and exciting, exciting name. Essentially what we are is an industry body led by Jo, Andrew, and myself, and we took over as co-chairs at the beginning of 2021. So we’ve been in position now for, well, we’re into our third year, but believe it or not, the IPTF has actually been around for almost 20 years. You have to correct me, Jo, if that’s not right, but I think it’s almost 20 years, which is quite mad and over that whole time and into our tenure as well, the ultimate aim has been the same and that’s to grow the IP market. So if I read out our mission then, so the mission of the IPTF is to be the voice for the income protection industry, promoting awareness of IP amongst consumers, removing barriers for distributors, enabling open dialogues between providers and advisors and driving up sales of income protection.

(03:05):

So we work with all the main reinsurers insurers, service providers, and many advice firms and networks. And the way we work is across a number of focus areas and work streams. So I’ll just give you very high level, I suppose there are three core focuses for us at the moment at the IPTF. The first is growing awareness of ip and Jo will talk more about that and IPO falls within that, removing barriers to ip, so looking at underserved markets, access to ip, new ways to distribute, and finally educating consumers to how do we increase awareness and understanding around IP in the consumer space.

Kathryn (03:44):

I was going to say that’s a really good, very, very good mission to have. So Jo, I know you’ve got some objectives and things as well to share with us as well.

Jo (03:54):

Yes, well, looking at IPO specifically, I guess Katie has touched there on our different work streams and as the IPTF, we have a few core values as well that we try and work by. One of them when we set out in 2021 was to be bold, I guess IPO grew out of that and also a need for us to know how all this content that we were producing in our work streams was going to be useful and how we could get it out there. So IPO was really born out of a need to get that material out to advisors. So the objective really of IPO is to educate advisors around ip, really all product features, how to sell it, who potential clients could be, and it has evolved, it’s fair to say we are approaching the third ipo and it started off, we really focused on advisors not selling any IP at all. And I think we’ve naturally realized that there’s something for everyone in ipo. We’ve seen through the comments and questions we were getting through the sessions last year, that what we are saying and the examples we’re showing through IPO are challenging advisors that have been doing this for years into different ways of thinking. So it really aligns with the IPTS values and mission as well. It’s all about seeking open dialogue and removing barriers and ultimately driving up sales.

Kathryn (05:26):

Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say for any listeners who aren’t familiar with it as well, IPO is Income Protection Awareness Week. I just suddenly thought how strange it might sound actually just keep saying that and not saying what it’s, but last year was a really good success. There was so much talk about it. I mean social media was just going crazy with all the information about it. So what was the kind of key things that you went over last year?

Jo (05:50):

So historically, we’ve always had different days of the week aimed at different types of advisors. So last year on Tuesday we were looking specifically at mortgage advisors and how they could include IP in their conversations. And we had the now infamous wealth Wednesday where we reached out to wealth advisors and we discussed again how they should include IP in their process and if they weren’t going to how they should set up referral agreements and signpost. And Thursday has historically always been a bit of a underwriting claims day for Andrew. Whatever

Andrew (06:28):

Else changes about IPO Thursday, they wheel me out, Kathryn, and to be fair, I normally wheel your husband out as well to do the hard work. I was going to say, I think this year we’re finally subject to a last minute desperate call. I think we’ve stood Alan down for the first time, but yeah, I think it probably is worth saying actually there’s a load of good content from the first couple of years, including on the underwriting side last year. So Thursday ends up being largely about underwriting and claims and some of the practical things. It’s always led by advisors, not insurers. So we get closer to the real issues. But for the Thursday last year we did some really good videos on underwriting under the most frequently asked questions about underwriting and ip. I know Crystal from Kira did a couple, but they were a real mix and I think got close to some really good answers. So they’re still available on the website and probably the aim is that that maybe gives some people some confidence with those kind of things you might not want to ask, especially when you’re not sat in an office overhearing another question we used to learn. So yeah, I think that’s always a successful day.

Kathryn (07:39):

No, that’s great and it’s great to hear that it’s on the website too because I think that’s really important because with the success of last year to have all that content still there on the website, which is the, what’s the website again? Is it just if you search I PT F, it doesn’t, it just comes up as it on Google. It’s

Jo (07:54):

Ipf.co uk.

Kathryn (07:56):

Fantastic. So that’s an extra resource for everybody who is listening. I really suggest that you go there and obviously there’s signing up to newsletters and everything and it is really about, it’s not marketing, it’s not sales gimmicky or anything like that. It is about advice and resources. So it’s a great place for people. So moving on then a little bit to just give people why we’re doing this and why you’re still going and obviously why it’s been needed for these last 20 years or so is if I come up to you, Andrew, you’ve been involved with the IPTF now since beginning of 2021, all three of you. But what are you seeing in the industry now? What kind of, I suppose have there been any changes in the last couple of years that you’re feeling either consumer or advisor wise or even insurer or reinsurer wise at all?

Andrew (08:41):

Yeah, there’s always changes. Even if it might not feel like it day to day, right? It’s probably the truth in our industry. It can feel slow at times, but that’s where it’s nice coming online, things like this and going, well actually over three years things do change. I guess. Look, the instant positive is that sales are going in the right direction and that’s true for income protection and being honest, it’s not true for life and critical illness. So the exact scale of growth depends on which numbers you look at, but whether you look at Swiss free generally or Iris I pipeline, so whether you’re looking at reinsurer or tech data of applications or premiums being written, IP premiums are pretty significantly up over the last couple of years.

(09:30):

What you have to say sadly still in the next breath is they’re still not nearly as high as they could or should be and they’re not nearly as high as for critical illness. So I guess rule of thumb is that what life sells about a million policies, critical illness sells about half a million and IP is nudging on 200,000. So we’re back up closer to a lot, closer to 200,000 than the doldrums of 100,000 where the product has been. All of these numbers that I’m quoting here, by the way are for individual ip. So group IP obviously exists as well alongside all of this. So they’re new business sales each year, but the numbers are going up as we say, depending on what numbers you look at, certainly 10 to 20% a year. So there’s real growth and we can speculate on all the reasons for that and maybe we can do that next.

(10:19):

But I guess just briefly to touch on your product point there Kathryn, and for people who may have done IP in the past and not done it for a while, I think the big shift over the last three to five years has been more and more shorter term products being sold. So where probably five, 10 years ago almost all IP that was sold was to retirement. Now it’s pretty much a 50 50 split between products that are two or five years or sometimes even one year policies rather than retirement policies. And obviously that’s for a number of different reasons. Some is budget, some is products, some is, you still get access to the same value add benefits of which again, we’ll speak more later, but in terms of from an advisor perspective, if you haven’t done it for a while or don’t do it that frequently, that’s I think probably the most significant change in terms of product pricing and everything that comes with that.

Kathryn (11:15):

Absolutely. Because I know we’re going to chat a little bit as well potentially about some of the biggest barriers to increasing IP sales and I think just exactly why the reason that you guys are here is doing that education piece. It’s not just consumers, it’s advisors too. Because the amount of times that we speak to advisors and they don’t have access to certain insurers, which means that maybe they are just purely to a time and options that they have, they then don’t have the options that would maybe be more affordable for some clients. And I know it’s that kind of thing. As an advisor, you always want to go to retirement. So I always say this, I always say to everybody, I’m going to give you the old singing, old dancing version. We can then work backwards because I want to see them, I want ’em to have the best of the best, but then there are times that we do need to go shorter term, it’s better for them to walk away with a two year or five-year claim than to walk away with nothing. And then sometimes we do have it where client circumstances mean that they have to be a two year or five year claim. So there are so many different things, but I think would you say that’s probably one of the biggest barriers then Andrew? I think that probably stands out with you bringing that one up, that it’s just that general education piece.

Andrew (12:16):

Yeah, I think it still is. I think it must still be, and frankly it’s one that I think it’s an advisor driven change that changed to two and five year customers. Obviously the products were there that advisors have bought, but there’s plenty of products that have been dangled out there, whether it’s simple critical illness or whether it’s blended life CIP and we could spend an hour listing all of them, but actually probably the one product change that’s really the advisors have really grabbed and forced every insurer now to have different propositions across the whole protection space. I think over the last decade has been these short term ips. It raises some quite interesting points around we’re now definitely blurring into a SU accident and sickness benefits at some point. And to some people that is what income protection is, right? If you go out on the street and ask people for the definition, then that’s definitely in there in the headspace as well.

(13:16):

So I think we need to be more conscious of that, probably looking forward and realistic about where our proposition or the traditional income protection proposition sits now. But yeah, ultimately it feels for all of the absolutely true and right mission statement stuff about IPTF. It feels like across income protection in general and probably I or specifically that we do actually have some FOMO and fear of missing out. Correct my four letter acronym before you do Kathryn. So the first time, and that’s really exciting. I think for most of my working career IP has kind of been the thing you should do. And again, with consumer duty now, oh you should do this. And we all know if someone’s telling you that, you kind of listen to it and nod, but it feels at the moment, actually this is something that everyone else is doing, so why aren’t you And we exist to make that easier.

Kathryn (14:17):

Absolutely. And I think that kind of all nicely fits inside the next question that I was going to ask you all. I’m going to put you all on the spot if that’s okay. And Jo, I’m going to go for you first. I was going to say if you could change one thing about the income protection market and with all your experience, I know that you guys are just so sat in this space at this moment, what would be the one thing that you would really love to see change?

Jo (14:40):

So I’m going to start early actually, and hopefully it’s something that would benefit the whole market and advisors in particular. And that is financial education in schools. I think if we could start that awareness raising earlier, and I’m talking about really useful education, not stuff we’re necessarily seeing at the moment. So for people to understand what is a mortgage and understand what that debt is, what their financial responsibilities are, what credit cards are, how you pay that off, what’s compound interest, those sort of useful things that are going to equip them to understand what they can do and what they need to do for their own financial resilience. I think that would be a huge step in terms of them understanding what happens are out there or even being interested in finding out once they’re out of school and education. So that would be my first thing on my wishlist I guess.

Kathryn (15:40):

I think that sounds great. I was going to say I do see quite a few I FFAs who do things like they volunteer at the local schools to go in and do some things about pensions, investments, trying to do engaging ones. And I’m a governor at school here and I keep thinking how can I bring income protection to six to 11 year olds in a sense? And I’m sure that it’s possible to, but I’m trying to think of something like super, super fun and engaging whilst also trying to make sure I have time to do something like that obviously because obviously kids that age, it’d be brutal with me if it wasn’t any good. But Andrew, let’s ask you then. So what would be your thing that you would like to see changed?

Andrew (16:18):

Just thinking of how you can engage prime. If you took my kids’ prime bottles away from them, Kathryn, but if there was some threat of that, I think that would cut through. But anything else at the moment that’s this week, by the time this podcast goes out, it’ll be something else. I was

Kathryn (16:32):

Going to say I like that you’ve gone in for a threat. I would go through library, it’s just like I’ve got chocolate.

Andrew (16:38):

Yeah, I’ll let people make their own opinions. Yes. So for me, I’m going to do what I do best and be slightly selfish and also use the intelligence of others. So self-employed and small limited company directors and things like that. We’ve spent the last six months looking at collaboratively in one of our work streams. And I guess the reason for looking at that is still a pretty firm belief that there’s huge under penetration of income protection for the self-employed. And as I say, I won’t reiterate every version not, but almost for those people who would describe themselves as self-employed let’s say. And we know that the numbers, it’s about 10%. Again, stats differ, but it’s certainly of that region of people who are self-employed and have income protection and clearly then for nine in 10, there’s a huge gap in the protection. They have outputs from the work stream that I think could concretely change.

(17:43):

Do you fall across advisors and insurers? So there is a real, there’s admission I think from some advisors that knowing some of the difficulties that they would face around things like proving income and especially income in early years mean that whether you’re a mortgage broker, a wealth advisor or a general protection specialist or anything else, if somebody says they’re a company director, are you more or less likely to say we should talk about income protection? And clearly for me the aim is they should be more likely to talk about it, feel confident to talk about it and everything like that. And as I acknowledge in the first part, I think there is more that can be done. There are some quite interesting things out there from individual insurers trying to bridge that gap, especially for people as they make the move over. So I think the traditional route of saying we need two or three years of accounts and then we’ll average those and that kind of thing understandably causes concerns and gives a reason to delay. So I think there’s some interesting propositions coming out there around how that can go forward. So I think making that a clearer thing that every advisor when they hear someone say I’m a company director or I’m becoming self-employed advisors see that as an opportunity to talk about ation, not a reason to back away from it would be my wish.

Kathryn (19:08):

Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say it feels quite bizarre to me that it wouldn’t be as soon as you hear self-employed as an advisor. To me it’s just automatic. Well for anybody, for me it’s income protection, but as soon as I hear company direct I’m like executive income protection and it’s, it’s trying to see all those different aspects to it. But I suppose if people, I think a lot of the time with advisors you do tend to have probably a mentor or someone that you work with quite a bit and if that person hasn’t necessarily had income protection at the top of their mind, whenever they’re doing things you tend to then get influenced. And there’s definitely been quite a long timeframe I think in our industry where it’s all been life and kick always about life and kick because I think naturally because they do merge together and income protection is being seen as a side piece, but life and critical illness and income protection are automatically already seen as a side piece by quite a lot of advisors. So income protection is just a side piece of a side piece. So it is a bit strange and I think it’s great to be really focusing upon the way the advisors are changing their mindsets for it. And Katie, what would be the one thing that you would like to change?

Katie (20:13):

Well I actually have one and a half if that. Okay. Because my half kind of builds on Jo’s point around the financial education at early stage because I think that’s absolutely true and I think it’d be brilliant to get an IP messaging at that point, but I think there’s still a bit of a disconnect isn’t there, between well how are those people going to buy IP because young people and our future customers who are coming through aren’t all going to get advice if we’re honest about it, they’re going to want to buy in different ways and things are changing. So I think having that openness as an industry to really meet those future customers where they’re at with different ways to buy I think is really important. And that’s something that I suppose we’ve also been looking at the IPTF this year in particular different ways to talk about IP distributed.

(21:05):

So I suppose that would be my half. My other point, a little bit different to that I suppose would be a bit more on the underwriting side actually. So I suppose as a society we are more health conscious today than we’ve ever been, which is a really good thing. There are lots of medical and clinical tools, things that people can do at home, we’re encouraged to go and seek help and things like that if we need it, which still all really positive and as an industry we encourage that through the messaging we have, through the value of the benefits and things like that in terms of prevention. So that’s all a positive, but I think it feels like there’s an opportunity to really reflect that in the underwriting approach. I’m sure Kathryn, you’ve probably seen you see this every day.

Kathryn (21:57):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it’s an interesting one because obviously the value added benefit’s absolutely phenomenal. Being able to access gps, physiotherapy, occupational, all the different things, but one that sometimes it’s just every now and then I’ll suddenly look at something and I think both of my mind works. I think that seems to be like a loop that’s got a bit of a hole in it in a sense when I’m looking at communications and different things. And I just remember a few months ago, and I think I maybe said it on the podcast actually, so something that stands out for me is that with income protection, especially as soon as we have a mental health condition, there does tend to be a mental health exclusion on there. We are starting to see some really big improvements. So if it’s been a case of someone’s needed some support due to bereavement and it was a few years ago, that doesn’t necessarily mean automatic mental health exclusion.

(22:45):

But sometimes again, like you say, if people aren’t getting advice, they’re using online systems and they might be automatically seeing that because they don’t have someone to really speak to me, show and go, come on. But I always find it very strange. It’s sort of like we’re doing the value added benefits, dropping mental health support, but then we’re advocating for people to do that really positively encouraging people because mental health is such an important thing. It’s incredible the amount of support that insurers offer. But then at the same point when we get into the underwriting side of things, if somebody has engaged with those mental health support services, they have to say, yes, I have spoken to somebody. And then that can in itself lead to an automatic mental health exclusion. So I think there is an area there where there’s a loop that’s a bit broken that we just need to really figure it out because, and I always say this, I do not envy the underwriters or the actuaries or anybody who would need to be dealing with this, but ultimately lots of young people now do engage with talking therapy.

(23:41):

People are engaging with the mental health support services. We see the fantastic coming out of insurers, meaning that people are doing that. But then if we’re actively encouraging people to do something to improve their mental health, then we shouldn’t then be putting a negative in terms of the terms that they might eventually be seeing. And there’s lots of other things as well that can really, really play an issue with it. And I have to say unfortunately, it does tend to get us women quite a bit, being a woman who has a newborn baby and is feeling quite naturally stressed and not feeling great, she could as well. Alan’s definitely spoken about this at a conference recently where potentially has a bad back as well because you’re picking up putting down this baby all the time eventually to get bigger. They still want carrying, I know my eldes still want carrying until at the age of four or five and he was awai, so my back definitely was sore.

(24:39):

And then again straight away at that situation, she’s been stressed because she’s handling a baby. Whilst I’m not saying it’s always women at home, but just generally we will have that. And then there can be a mental health exclusion, it can be a back exclusion. One more thing in there, she could be declined IP across the board. You then have women going through menopause who tend to have symptoms that can mimic stress. And again, we can then potentially not all, but we can potentially have that situation, especially if advisors aren’t being used as well, if people are going direct where we can have those exclusions, which are very, very tricky. So yeah, I think you’re right Katie. A nice sort of way of trying to figure out. I’d say as well though, in terms of accessibility, and now I’m going slightly off tangent here, but we are involved in quite a few pilots with income protection as well.

(25:29):

So at the moment now as well, there’s been incredible phenomenal improvements in terms of income protection with people living with HIV and we now could potentially get standard terms of cover, which is compared to where we were 18 months ago, that is just way beyond anywhere where we are. So there are improvements we do see them. Yeah, absolutely. I can definitely see where you suggest that Katie, because there’s always something else that we can do with it. But now I was going to say for anybody who can’t see this, Andrew had to just step away for it now we’ve done all the intense underwriting chat.

Andrew (26:02):

Say anything, I’m so sorry.

Kathryn (26:04):

Not say that I, I’ve just gone for it

Andrew (26:06):

In the bit at the start where you asked how I was and I was slightly quiet and distracted. So our dog, our lovely cock pee, so we have a cockapoo called Flo who I think is probably about 12 months younger than fudge. So she’s 10 months and I now know this morning she stood on a bee, so that was a friend who knows more about dogs than me with me going, she’s limping and she’s whining, but I don’t know, they’d said they’d come round at some point after 12, but the one time someone comes around early. But yes, and equally if you heard any noise in the first 20 minutes, that wasn’t my stomach rumbling, that was slow having a little wine. I promise I back and I’m sure there’s an IP analogy about illness or something. A dog IP policy.

Kathryn (26:49):

There you go. Yeah, I was going to say and there’s got to to be something about stepping on a bee somewhere. Yeah, exactly. We’re going to have an exclusion on that foot for a bit, let’s just see how we go with it. No, we were just having a good chat about underwriting and accessibility and we’re talking a bit on the mental health side and I was just saying about the incredible developments in terms of HIV underwriting as well in this space. So then we’ve had a really good chat about what you guys are up to I Paul last week, so income protection awareness week. Again just to confirm that for anybody, we’ve talked about the barriers, what we’re seeing in the industry now, what you would like to change. So I think it’s only natural that we start talking about what’s going to come up in the IPO week 2023. So you’ve got a four week plan I believe, is that correct?

Jo (27:34):

Do indeed.

Kathryn (27:35):

Fantastic. So then if I maybe start with you then, Jo, if you want to tell us just a quick thing about what’s happening on Monday?

Jo (27:42):

Yes, sure. Absolutely. So this year I’ll just say that IPO is slightly different in that we don’t have those days dedicated to particular types of advisors. There is something for everyone every day because we’re going to follow the advisor journey and look at different aspects of the advisor role each day. So Monday you will see us doing a little bit of what we’re seeing in the market, a little bit of scene setting and talking about why we still do IPO and much of that we’ve covered today as well. But we’ll be basically looking at getting started on Monday. Where do you find your business and your clients? So we’ve had our seven advisors campaign running all this year, so we’ll be bringing that in on the Monday because one of our advisors, Hannah very bravely shared a video about the difficulties she was having in getting her pipeline established. So she’s going to be coming in for a chat and we’re going to talk to some other advisors about how they’ve got themselves established. And then we are going to have a very interesting panel discussion about establishing an online brand, be that a personal brand or a corporate brand and the importance of that in setting yourself up really. So it’s Monday.

Kathryn (28:58):

Brilliant. I’ve just only thought of two things that we need to clarify, if that’s okay. Which Monday, I know it’s September, but what’s the start date? I only thought it’s good share.

Jo (29:09):

Yeah, so do you just want me to say the date, the dates that it’s running? Yeah, so IPO runs the week of the 18th of September, so 18th till the 22nd of September and it’s at 12 o’clock, 12 noon each day for an hour online.

Kathryn (29:25):

Fantastic. And then just because you brought it up and people are going to go, what’s that? What’s the seven advisors, if you can just explain that to us.

Jo (29:34):

So Seven Advisors is a campaign that we’ve been running this year where it’s the name seven advisors pops back to our seven families campaign where we followed the lives of seven families. This year we are following seven advisors all with very different grounds and levels of experience. We are asking them to document their sort of role and video diaries that they send us with the challenges that they’re facing, the successes they’re having, the queries that are coming up in conversations. And we are following that all via our LinkedIn page and on our YouTube channel. So you can find out more via ipf.co uk or following us on LinkedIn. You’ll see the videos twice a week.

Kathryn (30:20):

Fantastic, that sounds really, really good. So on Tuesday then what do we have for us on Tuesday, Katie?

Katie (30:26):

Yeah, so we go from getting started and finding clients on the Monday through to, okay, well you’ve found a client and you’ve set up that first meeting, so what can you do to best prepare for that to have a successful IP outcome essentially? So you’ll be hearing from advisors, different advisors, different businesses on how they best prepare, so what questions they’re asking ahead of time, what reports they’re generating, what are they thinking in terms of how they position IP as part of a wider personal finance conversation. We also have a panel, we love a panel at ipo, bringing together industry experts with network representation, advisor representation. Really we’re looking at that theme of preparing but in the context of what’s going on in the world at the moment, their economic volatility, where the mortgage market is, where investment markets are, what specifically can advisors do to address those points in their preparation.

Kathryn (31:28):

Fantastic. And Wednesday, I believe we’re back with you George, just to give us a bit of background on the Wednesday

Jo (31:34):

We are back with me. Yes, I will say I don’t appear that much on Wednesday, but I will be introducing a bit of a sales masterclass and we’ll be focusing on overcoming objections that might come up in those client conversations. I guess the spoiler is of course if you’ve prepared brilliantly and your client is fully aware that you’re going to have that conversation, then you shouldn’t be facing lots of objections. But we are quite realistic in the current context, it’s cost of living crisis that there will be questions asked. So we really want to help prepare advisors to see those objections really as opportunities to have a really in-depth conversation with clients. So they come out understanding what you are proposing and you ultimately, as Katie said, end up with a great IP outcome.

Kathryn (32:26):

Absolutely. And Andrew, I think, is this the Thursday for you again underwriting and claims? Yeah,

Andrew (32:33):

Thursdays I thinked at earlier. Yeah, we get ’em excited until Wednesday and then the reality hits a Thursday just like,

Kathryn (32:40):

Well you’ve already got this far, you may as well get through the underwriting. Exactly.

Andrew (32:44):

That’s it Kathryn. Yeah, that’s very much the energy we’re going for. Brilliant. Yeah, again, I think it’s a day probably most of all where there’s that, the stealing this podcast’s inspiration unashamedly the practical elements. We recognize we’re not going to change the world with any panel or anything that we can do publicly on that Thursday, but what we can do really effectively is share things that actually work for advisors when they face that difficult case, when they have that difficult conversation, when they’re setting expectations with clients and things like that. So that’s very much the focus on the underwriting side. We won’t be saying, well you should go with that hypertension case, but we will be kind of coming up with ideas for what you do. I think a big theme this year specifically is probably around exclusions and reviewable exclusions and non-viewable exclusions. That’s certainly something that I think the guys are quite keen to talk about in how that can and should affect where you place business and how it can affect what you do next after placing business. So again, that’s probably something where it’s always interesting where the market’s pretty much 50 50 split and I think insurers are quite split there and maybe some advisors aren’t quite aware of that. So we’ll be going into that and yeah, then the claims side we’ll be going through what happens and again how advisors can get involved, how that can go better or worse depending on how that’s managed.

Kathryn (34:26):

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s really important because one of the things I always think of with a review with an exclusion, it’s always worth asking. I’ve been chatting to people as well when they’ve been recently stuff like bringing clients to us and we’ve been chatting and I’ve said whether or not it’s seeking income protection or something else. And I’ll say, right, if you are told no it’s a decline, ask them when will it not be a decline so you can get that timeframe in. And that’s so relevant to any form of protection and that’s really good that you’re include in those bits as well. And Katie, I think you are finishing everything off on the Friday, are you?

Katie (34:58):

Yeah, so Friday is, it’s always the celebration day because it’s the end of the week and we we’ve survived, but then it’s always tinged with, it’s the day that’s always live from the studio so it’s tinged with a bit of fear in there. So other than doing the obvious things of recapping the week, taking any questions and also kind of thinking about how you can turn what you’ve heard into action, I think that’s really what we’ve always tried to achieve with IPO is that we don’t want it to be a lunchtime webinar that you come to and then quickly forget and go back to your very busy day. We want to give those tangible things that advisors can actually implement and use straight away, but there is also a theme on the Friday in terms of the content and I suppose throughout the week it’s been about ultimately getting a policy on risk and protecting another income. So then it’s about, okay, well how can advisors best be engaging with those clients on an ongoing basis? How can they be adding value? How can they be reviewing policies? What about the role of annual statements and how value added benefits can support them the minute that policy is live essentially and on an ongoing basis. So that’s the thing for Friday, it’s the live day, it’s the scary day, but it’s also the celebratory day as well.

Kathryn (36:22):

Fantastic. I think on the consumer duty aspect thing of that as well, it’s really important you were saying about annual statements and stuff. So I think some things some advisors don’t necessarily having mind a lot of the time is obviously we are encouraged to do increasing income protection, increasing policies because obviously salary has changed. But I think what some advisors don’t necessarily think about is that if they do the maximum amount for some assured for that person’s obviously salary and they do RP linking, which is obviously seen as good practice, if that person’s salary doesn’t increase, they’re actually going to become over-insured and the premiums are going to go up and think we’re paying for something they can access. So even more so than ever, we should have always been doing stuff like that, but especially when people are wanting to do stuff from the consumer duty, just having something in there to double check has that salary changed, it’s just an extra tick box to make sure that we’re doing completely right by the client. It’s great to see all that in there as well. I believe as we’re coming towards the end of the podcast as well, we’ll do a nice summary up with this. I believe you have CPD for everybody this year. Andrew, how is it that they are getting it? What do they need to do to be able to get that’s valuable? CPD?

Andrew (37:27):

Yes. I think again, shared pain probably Kathryn with some of your experiences in the early days of the Practical Protection Podcast, we are definitely on top of CPD this year. So I guess the most important thing is you register and you attend and you enjoy and you take something from it, right? That’s still fundamentally are genuinely our main motivation for doing this. So to register, you can either go straight to the website or follow us on LinkedIn and all those usual kind of things. And then if you register and attend and frankly it’s easy to see if you attend or not with technology these days and that CPT certificate will be sent automatically for each session that you attend. So it couldn’t be easier. The key thing is to register and then turn up and listen. And I guess still for us the aim is that there’s that engagement and buzz again around it this week we want to start conversations. We’ve done that pretty well in years gone past. That’s the reason we do it. That’s what excites us. Whether they involve us or whether involve, as you said earlier, Kathryn, someone’s mentor or going and investigating something. That’s the whole aim of this. But there is also CPT as well,

Kathryn (38:45):

Which is fantastic. We always like to hear that. And Jo, what do people can they do to get involved with stuff like IPTF? Where should they be going?

Jo (38:55):

Well, there’s lots, as Andrew’s mentioned, you can follow us on LinkedIn. We’re producing content every day from a hundred days before I pull. So you can explore the IPTS LinkedIn page. You can also send us a video if you’re feeling really brave. We are always welcoming video content. There’ll be lots of montage videos as part of ipo and so we would like to hear your thoughts on what you’re seeing in the market on any of the themes we’ve mentioned today. So how do you prepare for a client meeting? What objections do you hear from clients and how do you overcome them? Basically just join in the fun, really share your video on LinkedIn and we’ve got two hashtags to include. One is let’s talk IP and the other is icorp, which is we’ve said is a W 2023 and then we’ll see your content online. But yeah, it’s all about, as we’ve said a couple of times, advisors sharing their experience. IPO is not us telling you what to do, it’s us sharing the experience of other advisors to hopefully inspire and encourage other advisors. So sharing your videos online is all part of that.

Kathryn (40:13):

Fantastic. That sounds really, really great. Well thank you very much for coming on and setting us all up for the IPO that’s going to be happening super soon. Please do go on and register everybody. It’s certainly will help. It gets you CPD as well. I always like to say that it’s a real encouragement for people, get your CPD and I think what’s important as well is that it’s actually useful. Like I was saying there, saying Andrew, it’s practical, it’s actual useful information that will help you as an advisor. So thank you Jo, Katie, and Andrew for joining me today. It’s been a pleasure having you. Next time I’m going to be speaking with Justin Harper and we’ll be talking again about income protection. So we’re keeping this conversation going Definitely going forward. If you would like to get your CCPD certificate and see other episodes, please visit the website, practical hyphen protection dot code at uk and thank you very much everybody. I look forward to seeing this week coming up.

Andrew (41:06):

Yes, Kathryn, thank you.

Jo (41:08):

Okay.