Hi everyone, we have Steve Baldry and Katie Dennehy with us from UnderwriteMe, talking about the changes that they have seen in the protection insurance market. There’s a lot of stats!

We are looking at the types of advice that we are seeing advisers giving, the differences in consumer behaviour across genders and different age groups, plus the most common disclosures that we see in protection insurance applications.

The key takeaways:

• Critical illness purchases are increasing, life insurance is reducing a bit and income protection is roughly the same.
• Data shows that it is still more men buying protection insurance than women, but we are seeing an uptake in women wanting income protection.
• Stress, anxiety, family history, back pain, high blood pressure and asthma, are some of the most disclosed conditions in protection insurance applications.

Next time Matt Rann will be joining me and we are going to be talking about life insurance, critical illness and income protection for people that have had or currently have prostate cancer. There’s some really specific pieces of information that you need to know, to be able to research the best insurer for someone with this condition.. 

Remember, if you are listening to this as part of your work, you can claim a CPD certificate on our website, thanks to our sponsors Octo Members.

If you want to know more about how to arrange protection insurance, take a look at my 13 hour CPD Protection Insurance in Practice course here and 1 hour CPD Protection Competency Exam here.

Kathryn (00:06):

Hi everybody. We are on season eight, episode four, and we have Steve Baldry and Katie Dehy with me here today. Hi guys.

Steve (00:14):

Hello.

Kathryn (00:16):

Hi. Today we’re going to be talking about consumer trends when it comes to buying insurance and also what we are seeing in the advisor community. This is the Practical Protection Podcast. Sarah, you too. How’s your weekend been? Have we had some fun? We’ve had hopefully some nice weather.

Katie (00:40):

Well, not nice weather up in Manchester I think because we’re used to so much rain up here. But yeah, it’s been, had a very, very busy week last week, so no, all fun and games here.

Kathryn (00:50):

Fantastic. How about you, Steve? So been all right over the weekend. Anything fun that you’ve been up to?

Steve (00:54):

Well, it’s all kitty focused, so baking cakes and watching kids’ films at the cinema for me,

Kathryn (01:01):

Very, very nice. It was, my eldest had his 12th birthday last week and he’d found this video on a TikTok that was a Kinder Bueno cookie cake pie. And that was the order. I was going to say, that was the order. I’ve got some pictures on social if anybody wants to find it. Couldn’t get kinder bueno in the same way. So it ended up being a dairy milk version of it, but essentially you made a cookie and you lined a cake tin with it all. You then just literally poured two tubs of Nutella into it and then it was chocolate on top and you had to freeze all this time as well and doing different things. And then you put the final bit of cookie on top, so it did become a pie. You had to bake it and then chill it and everything. And so I was really gutty because I couldn’t actually eat it, but it smelled so good. It’s really nice. Never had anything like that and all the kids’ faces were just like, oh my word, what does this happen? It was brilliant. So yeah, very, very, very, very busy weekend Saturday for me that it started very early on and took quite a few hours. But anyway, let’s get into things. So start things off. It’s always nice to hear a little bit about people and their backgrounds. So Steve, would you like to just give our listeners a bit of a background about you and what you’ve done and where you’re at now?

Steve (02:20):

Yeah, sure. So hi everybody. I’m Steve Baldry. I’m head of underwriting Underwrite me. I’ve been here about nine years now. I’ve seen a lot of change in that time. No doubt. We’ll talk about some of that today. Previously, previous life I started as a fresh faced 19-year-old at a company called Lincoln National who many people won’t remember and in the intervene in 20 something years or so, I’ve worked both in insurance and reinsurance, always around underwriting, can’t get out of it. Love music, holiday and sport. There you go. There

Kathryn (02:54):

You go. Very, very nice. And Katie, what about you?

Katie (02:58):

So I’ve been at me for two and a half years now. My background is protection and that’s how I got introduced to underwrite me. I’ve been in the insurance industry for about seven or eight years now, but I started off out in Australia. Yeah, yeah, did a little stint over there, but yeah, if it wasn’t for my little trip to Australia, I probably wouldn’t be here today. So yeah, look, like I said, I love protection. I love what indirect me do and yeah, love speaking to advisors about it.

Kathryn (03:28):

Fantastic then. So if we start getting into things then, so obviously under me is massive huge piece of technology and there is clearly going to be significant amount of data on those in terms of what consumers are doing. But what I think it’s quite interesting is it’s not necessarily just what consumers doing, it’s probably very much there by what are advisors doing, what are they suggesting? So if we maybe have a look at some of the data, Steve, I know that you’ll have reams and reams of data for us to have a look at, but if we look first off at product choice, so what kind of trends are we seeing over time in terms of things like life insurance, criticalness cover, income protection, what are people, what are advisors doing?

Steve (04:06):

Yeah, I’ve got lots of graphs in front of me. So the data that I’m talking about comes directly from the protection platform, which has been in existence since 2016, but it really took off in 2018 when a lot of insurers joining the platform at the time and that’s when it started to become really meaningful in that time. In terms of changes in purchasing behavior, we have seen marginal changes over the past five years or so. For instance, there’s been a very gradual upward trend of about four to 5% in critical illness applications. They’re going up and a slight dip in life insurance applications of about six to 7%. And that change was also we think exacerbated around 2020 during the pandemic when we did see a slightly bigger surge in critically on applications and a consequent drop in life once we came at the other side of the pandemic, things seemed to calm down and that sort of slow trends have continued since then. So yeah, more critically honest, less life on the platform by the looks of things.

Kathryn (05:12):

Absolutely. What about income protection? Do we have anything about where that sits in? I’m assuming it’s not as much as Life and Kick just as we see across the market anyway, but is that something like mirroring what we kind of hear and what we suspect is that IP is still struggling to get up there with the life and kick side of things?

Steve (05:31):

Yeah, absolutely. So we are not seeing the same levels of applications submitted through the platform. It sort of stagnates around 2%. A lot of it is driven by which insurers we’ve got on the platform at the time. So a lot have joined over a space of time and then we’ve lost one or two in the last couple of years through acquisition mergers and things like that. But yeah, you’re absolutely right. It seemed to be stagnated a very small percent.

Kathryn (05:59):

And Katie obviously you do a lot about demonstrating and directly obviously getting people and getting advisors in. You’re the one that’s really talking to the advisor side. And so what are you hearing in terms of from the advisor world in terms of what they’re using it for? What are those kinds of conversations that we’re having about those different product types?

Katie (06:18):

I think from what I generally see, I think the feedback that we get is not a lot of people are that confident in talking about it as much, but I think I actually see a bit of a difference in types of advisors that are actually selling a bit more as well. So I think mortgage advisors probably sell a little bit more from income benefit and also income protection compared to protection specialists. So that’s probably what I tend to see on my side of things for sure.

Kathryn (06:46):

Oh, that’s really interesting. Actually for a long, long time we’ve had so much where there’s been this constant drive and push to say, mortgage advisors, you must do protection, which is obviously great, as much protection as we can get out there better. So it’s really interesting that you’re seeing probably more of those conversations happening on that side because one of the things I do when I’m chatting to people I’m training people is say especially because there’s quite a few mortgage advisors that I speak to, as I say to ’em, if you’re setting up a mortgage, you are absolutely doing income protection. You are definitely looking at that because just as much as the life you must have, we don’t want to lose the home because of not having that in place. That’s really positive

Katie (07:23):

Because you’re more likely to claim on the IP or the kick, aren’t you? That’s what’s going to be covering their mortgages if they were ill. But the general feedback that we do get from mortgage advisors is we could be selling more protection so as much as the products a bit bit more, but we still get that feedback on obviously they could be selling a bit more.

Kathryn (07:44):

Yeah, I think that’s probably similar for across the market for so many. Not even just mortgage advice. You said protection specialists, investments, pensions is going to be everywhere. I’m just going back to what you’re saying as well there Steve, thinking about the fact that you said there was a dip in the life insurance side during the pandemic and obviously because what the data shows and everything, but around that time we did have it, didn’t it? We where a lot of insurers, there was a lot of closed doors. So it is quite understandable why there would’ve been a dip there because as soon as somebody was like, well you have covid right now, well we can’t do it right at this second. We need to wait, we need to make sure there’s no long lasting symptoms. So that would really count for why that was there. But really intriguing though that kick went up in a sense at that time, if I call it right, it is really interesting. Sorry, life went down but kick went up, we would’ve still had that kind of thing, wouldn’t we? About even stricter with Kick about getting that in place.

Steve (08:38):

I think that’s absolutely true. And what you say is true there about the insurers closing down there sort of referral business. Yeah, it is interesting. I dunno why it is, I mean we’ve got to remember that the protection platform is, it is a significant part of the protection industry. It’s over 20 of sales go through it, but it may be skewed to certain insurers on the platform or certain big distributors being on the platform as well. So absolutely it may not quite represent trends in other platforms,

Kathryn (09:09):

It may not represent the other 80%, but it’s giving us a really good ideas.

Steve (09:15):

But it’s interesting data tells half the story. You can sort of make assumptions and make stories up with the other half what you see and hear.

Kathryn (09:27):

No, absolutely. I think one of the things I’m going to find so intriguing, I say when we’re talking about this podcast and getting all this data together, those for me, it’s not a commentary on say like Undirect me. It’s not a commentary on the insurers, it’s a commentary on what the advisors are doing. And so I find that really, really interesting when I’m looking at the data I’m thinking, right, okay, so advisors are doing that, what were they doing at this point? Things like that up. Okay. What have you been seeing? As I said, we’ve got an increase in life, we’ve got an increase in kick, we’ve not necessarily seeing much jump in terms of the IP side of things, but when you’re seeing those changes over time, are there any kind specific drivers that you’re picking up or any kind of trends that we’re seeing, specific groups that are of people are potentially taking up more insurance? What’s the data say at the moment? And I appreciate as you say, we can read it in lots of different ways, but what’s your instincts from looking at it?

Steve (10:20):

Yeah, again, it’s a good question. We can talk a little bit about, well we found to answer that we looked into other factors such as applicant sex or gender and age and we do seem to see some interesting trends in driving those buying choices. We think. So in terms of gender, life cover sales are still broadly 55. 45 in favor of men and critical illness is 60 40 in favor of men and for both products. Since the platform was developed, we have seen a very slowly increasing trend for a greater proportion of women buying insurance, which is great. And that trend peaked in 2021 and sales for both products were sort of about 5% more than they had been when the platform had started. That trend has sort of bucked a little since 2021. They seem to be going back down to sort of where they were pre pandemic, I’m going to say pandemic and covid a lot here.

Kathryn (11:13):

I get that.

Steve (11:14):

That’s why we see the spikes in terms of income protection. It seems to have bucked that trend completely. So since 2018 we have seen more women buying income protection increased to by about 4% over that five years. And that’s continuing to grow in 2023. Could we looked at age as well? I dunno if you,

Kathryn (11:38):

It’d be interesting to hear about the age. I’m thinking in terms of the women’s, obviously I’m immediately thinking what does that mean? And I’m started thinking in terms of the pandemic. We know that women tend to devalue themselves in many, many situations, not just insurance. So it is such a key thing and what I love is the fact that how much we are seeing so many more women advisors and people are really starting to take control of it. And going back to the thing about the pandemic, what could be quite interesting in some ways is that was the pandemic maybe a catalyst for quite a lot of women to go, hang on a minute, partners got insurance or somebody else that I know has got insurance, why haven’t I insured myself? This scary thing is happening to so many people, I better get on top of this. Maybe that could be part of why it’s done it.

Steve (12:23):

Yeah, I was thinking about this this morning. I think the death of let’s say of a mother and father, they have equal impact on families, the families they leave behind and we put quite a lot of emphasis on insurance that covers tangible financial assets like a mortgage or loss of income or whatever. And we should put with equal weight and maybe that’s coming out, we should put equal weight in the cost of replacing those kind of social, paternal maternal responsibilities that aren’t necessarily fixed assets. Do you know what I mean? Definitely. And you’ve got many people working who have to cover those family responsibilities. So maybe something like that coming out of it. I dunno,

Kathryn (13:00):

I think you’re probably very, very right there with that. But yeah, with the age side of things then, so what we’re seeing,

Steve (13:07):

Yeah, so for all three products, if we compare just 2018 to 23, we saw sales of all three benefits. So life cover, critical illness and income protection. The sales have sort of stored for that sort of mid-age 30 to 49 year olds. Again, we saw a dip in 2020, but the levels have risen back to pre pandemic. There’s that word again level. But what you do see on the graphs is an increase in sales to the over fifties and particularly since the pandemic and conversely sales of all three products to the under thirties have continued to fall so marginally fallen and again, slightly exaggerated 2021. So what we’re seeing is a stagnated sales to that middle age if you like, less younger people buying insurance and more of those over fifties buying insurance.

Kathryn (14:05):

Absolutely. I’ve got theories about that. But Katie, before I go into my theories, Katie, what’s your thoughts? What are you seeing when you speaking to advisors?

Katie (14:14):

Well I think when I’ve been speaking to advisors about this, how people are approaching it with their clients, is that the furlough thing? If you thought that was beneficial, this is exactly what these insurances are doing, which I thought was a great way to talk about it to them more than anything. But yeah, no, I think that’s probably again what I probably see from them.

Kathryn (14:40):

Okay. I was going to say I have some theories about those stats and I could be making them up, but again, it’s how I’m at the top of my head, what I’m thinking about them probably walk away from this after doesn’t go, she was completely wrong. But anyway, so I’ve got some theory, so the increasingly over fifties, I’m seeing a lot more people who are getting mortgages at a much older age and equity release, things like that. So I think that that could be a big reason. I have quite a lot of people come to me with sort of people introducing people to me saying we’ve set up this equity release or we set up this mortgage, the mortgage is finished when the person’s 70 and I’m just like, wow kind of thing. That’s intense. But then I’m wondering on the other side of that, with the under thirties, obviously we know that people are massively struggling to get mortgages when they’re under 30 and obviously we’ve kind of got this renters bubble now.

(15:23):

People are just stuck and trapped. One of the things for me is that whenever we talk about insurance, a lot of the time it is something like a mortgage that’s the catalyst for people to suddenly go, oh, I should really get this type. Like your mom and dad have done it, they’ve had insurance, it was a dumb thing. Get the mortgage, you make sure it’s insured. Not necessarily all the other stuff as well, but it tends to have been there. And I think, I dunno, I just feel like that could be, I think we could be getting quite led by things really outside. It’s not completely outside, but it’s things that are tangent to the protection side. But yeah, maybe that’s it.

Katie (16:03):

Go. I was in a presentation not that long ago with an insurer. I think they were saying the average age now for the first home is like 38 maybe, but many moons ago it was in your early twenties. So yeah, I definitely agree with that for sure.

Kathryn (16:20):

Absolutely. It’s quite scary.

Steve (16:23):

It is quite scary. Yeah, I think that sounds absolutely plausible I think. But I was again, thinking about this morning, I think people are much more kind of cognizant of their financial security and health because of the pandemic and because of the cost of living crisis. And if you think about the trends in demographics, maybe it’s no surprise that rising number of over fifties are buying insurance. It was the pandemic after all that predominantly affected older lives and people maybe look at their own mortality and consequently the financial security of their families maybe of kind of an increased sense of personal value. And then when I flip it round, the interesting bit might be that the younger people who weren’t affected by the pandemic, maybe there’s a sense of

Kathryn (17:11):

Invisibility, immortality,

Steve (17:13):

You know what I mean? So why do I need that? Just another interesting SL

Kathryn (17:22):

Go on Katie. Sorry

Katie (17:23):

As going off what you said before as well in the catalyst of what’s driving people to it, I think the worst part is when people go through something or they’ve had a scare and that’s what drives them to go get insurance and then there’s always the hurdles that go along with it, isn’t it? Absolutely. I think that I hear that quite a bit as well.

Kathryn (17:43):

Definitely. I was going to say that invincibility thing as well though, that’s something we’ve always had to fight and like you say in terms of the pandemic, it’s not helped to thinky that. But again, just as you know myself, Steve, on this in terms of the underwriting side, like you’re saying, it makes perfect sense as well, not just pandemic, but people tend to get diagnosed with conditions that are quite scary and intense more towards when you’re getting into your forties and fifties. And again, hearing those conversations a lot of the time with people they’ll say, right, well actually my friend or my neighbor has suddenly had this and it’s just made me really scared. So there’s definitely that would lead it as well. But really right segue that ga into the thing about potentially disclosures in applications and stuff because the next question I was going to ask is that obviously you guys provide a centralized application that feeds in and builds this underwriting engine that lots of insurers can dip into and say, right, depending upon these answers we’ll offer X, Y, Z, things like that. So what are the most common disclosures that you see within the platform? What generally are people putting in there?

Steve (18:51):

Yeah, for me I guess,

Kathryn (18:53):

Yeah, sorry Steve. Yeah, that’s fine.

Steve (18:55):

Sorry. Things like stress and anxiety have always been the most highly disclosed conditions on the protection platform. I think for most insurers, about 15% of all applicants will disclose a stress or anxiety of some description and that hasn’t really changed. We did make some application form changes around mental health in 2020 and we did see more disclosure coming through around that time. Now that could be driven by the pandemic or those changes made it clear and simpler. Probably a combination of both. And then in terms of other things, we see a lot of family history around about 10% of customers will disclose a family history of some description and then things like asthma, high blood pressure, back pain, all those sort of common things that you see them coming through quite a bit. Yeah,

Kathryn (19:48):

Absolutely. I was going to say I can definitely appreciate it, especially if we’re talking about the pandemic. It was one of those things that I remember. I think me and Andrew, when we first started the podcast, it started at the beginning of the pandemic and we did a mental health one and we were sort of saying at the time in a sense who could say no when we were in the pandemic. It would be unusual if you hadn’t felt uneasy in a sense in that situation. It was such a difficult thing. When you are chatting to people, Katie, again on the advisor side, what are they saying in terms of filling things in and in terms of what they’re looking for in terms of disclosures? I think it’s fair to say as well that underwriting does give that option where obviously it’s very useful in the sense if you can go in, you can target certain disclosures, get an indication.

(20:39):

But I think it is fair to say as well that there are certain things where as an advisor, if you know that it’s going to go for a GP report that just in your systems as it was with another insurer systems, it’s going to say at the end it’s going to refer and things like that. So we need to be, I think it’s fair to be upfront, but diabetes high BMI, blood pressure, like you’re saying, asthma, mental health obviously within certain realms of mental health and stuff, sometimes the strongest symptoms do mean that it would still refer in. But what do you hear Katie?

Katie (21:10):

So I think that the biggest frustrations with advisors when it comes to stuff like this with disclosures is that you’d have to go to, well without the protection platform, you’d have to go to one insurer, complete their application, either get a decline or refer or return. But if you get a decline or refer, you go back to your next insure and e that application. So I think having a platform like ours that literally shows you who accepts exclusions of the policies. I think on going back to the family history disclosure, there’s one that I do in particular on my demos that for me, I think really, really highlights the platform and how important it is to use a system like ours because there’s insurers out there that puts disclosures on, sorry, exclusions on, sorry. And then there’s other insurers that do buy now without exclusions. And I think because a lot of advisors have more than 10 insurers to choose from, sometimes the habits can be we’ll probably ring the top three or four. And when there’s more insurers that are offering clients without exclusions, I think that’s really, really important to kind of highlight that if you use our system in conjunction with what you’re doing, you’re not missing out on these opportunities for your clients.

Kathryn (22:28):

Definitely. And I was going to say from an advisor’s point of view, because obviously and a compliance point of view, if you are looking at your comparison and the top three that you’re looking at definitely are going to be rating, then you shouldn’t just stop there. You need to keep going until you explore to see if they’re all there. But it’s interesting what you’re saying about that. I know when I’ve used the system, sometimes I’ll have it where all but one say refer or that it’s going to be this and then you’ll just have one and it’ll be something where it’s just maybe a bit of an unusual situation. I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but it’ll be something where you’re kind of thinking, I imagine they’ll maybe affirm this. You’re like, oh no, actually that one can accept. That’s nice. It works really, really well.

Katie (23:05):

Exactly. And I think I always say that to advisors as well because when I first introduced the system to everybody, what the most common thing that I do hear back is, oh, I didn’t realize that that insurer accepted it on that. And I think having that visibility for them is just so important because you’ll start to use insurers that you probably haven’t really used before, you don’t really know about underwriting, and again, you’re helping deliver the better outcomes for their clients.

Kathryn (23:32):

Absolutely. So what are we seeing in terms of, so if we go to, like you were mentioning there as well, there are times that there’s going to be exclusions and things like that and there’s times that there’s going to be premium increases. One of the things I always like to make sure that we say to advisors is in terms of life insurance, we wouldn’t expect exclusions. We’d maybe expect a premium increase critical illness cover. It’s a little bit hit and miss between the ones, but say with things like cancer, we would want to make sure that if you saw, and this isn’t saying through your platform, it’s just in general, but if you were to see something like critical illness cover with a full cancer exclusion, then you want to do your absolute best to try and see if there’s an insurer that doesn’t do that and that there’s maybe more of a localized ones and maybe two or three might say full cancer exclusion. But one might say in a sense just the breast cancer exclusion. And I don’t mean just as in that negating that exclusion, but just saying we want to try and make sure we’re doing that. But are there any things that you are seeing in terms of those non-standard terms? Probably again, well Steve first if that’s all right, in terms of the data and everything, what are those conditions that at the moment tend to be the ones that are increasing the premiums a bit for people?

Steve (24:41):

Yeah, I mean I don’t think you’d find any surprises. We don’t see many differences again between genders just to say that first, unless it’s a biologically gender specific question. So prostate or gynecological problems for instance, men are more likely to be rated for cardiovascular conditions so that by that I mean high blood pressure and cholesterol, things like that and build and are 6% more likely to be rated for diabetes, for instance, women are more likely to be rated for osteoarthritis, which was a surprise to me. But then when you look at population stats entirely keeping with population stats, which suggests women are two times more likely to get it and to get more pain when they have it. So it is probably not a surprise. Really what I’m seeing in terms of where people are rated or excluded is entirely keeping with what you would see in a normal population. Really,

Kathryn (25:34):

I’m very intrigued by that. Can I dig into your underwriting mind please? If that’s alright? So I’m intrigued as to why osteoarthritis. I mean I know there’s different ranges and obviously different levels, but is that, I dunno, is it due to potential medication? Is it due to potential loss of mobility and that then potentially having issues in terms of organ involvement and things like that? I’m just really intrigued as to why osteoarthritis out of the arthritis is probably was the most common I imagine and probably the least bad. So how come that, sorry, I know we’re going complete tangent here, but I just want to pick your brain while you’re here.

Steve (26:13):

Yeah, so I’m sure there are underwriters out there who are more qualified than me. So I think it’s something to do with a woman’s physical body. So the fact that you give birth basically, so bones have to be malleable and you go through that kind of that process maybe more than once in your life. So I think there’s something in that you tend to see it more in hips and knees I think, which is sort of fits with that quite well and possibly hormonal as well. So I think there’s probably a couple of things in it. I probably should have Googled that before I spoke.

Kathryn (26:52):

No, I’m just so intrigued now I’m thinking is it rating life? Is it obviously, and obviously we know what we’d be seeing in the IP type of space, but I’m just very, very intrigued by that. Obviously the men one in terms of the cardiovascular, the BMI, the diabetes, things like that, are they more likely to be rated just because there’s more prevalence potentially in that gender or is it that there is a slight difference between outlooks for men and women with those conditions?

Steve (27:17):

Yeah, I think it’s outlook. I think men are more likely to have it and less likely to look after themselves.

Kathryn (27:24):

Okay. I was going to say we’re giggling having a little smile there about that. I can say that

Steve (27:29):

Being a man

Kathryn (27:30):

You look after yourself Steve. Yeah,

Steve (27:32):

Absolutely. I tried to,

Kathryn (27:33):

He’s only said he’s sporty, he’s alright, he saying I’m sure he is getting his five foot, was it five times a week, 30 minute of cardio to make sure that everything’s okay. Especially we were told that weren’t we at the Lucid conference by one of the cardiologists to make sure we get that. Yeah, okay then. Okay, so you guys are obviously really well positioned in terms of consumer behavior and what you think is going to happen next in the next year or so. Steve, in terms of underwriting, if I can pick your brains there and then Katie, if we can maybe chat about what you think advisors are going to be doing over the next year. Sorry, what your predictions are. So Steve, what do you think is going to go on? What do you think consumers and advisors are going to be doing?

Steve (28:13):

Yeah, so I mean if the data’s right then we might continue to see sales of IP and critical illness on the app, which would be a great thing. But then again we’re going through a cost of living crisis, so who knows? But it feels like there are real opportunities for those sort of underserved markets. So women in particular and perhaps younger lives the under thirties as well. As you’ve described earlier, I like the new products that are coming through to support people who might feel otherwise they can’t get insurance. So you’ve got things like diabetes cover, I know Royal London do that and products that cover complex medical history, so they carry quite high ratings. I know the products like that are there. That’s great. In terms of what we’re doing underwrite me, we’re doing a lot of work with insurers to build products that make the administration of those referrals much, much quicker.

(29:01):

So things like GPRS will be returned quicker, they’ll be underwritten quicker, automated without human touch, medical exams, blood tests, that sort of thing can go through insurers now without an underwriter seeing any part of that process. And because of this automation, insurers are getting much, much more data than ever before and it’s that data that helps ’em build much more customer-centric personalized products as we’re seeing with diabetes and much more personalized customer journey. So yeah, I’m hoping that that trend as we build more data science into the underwriting process continues and we make things much, much more efficient for insurers and people buying the insurance as well. Absolutely.

Kathryn (29:47):

Fantastic. And Katie, what do you think you’re going to see in the advisor? Have you got any inklings about what the advisors are going to be doing?

Katie (29:54):

Well I think, which I noticed the buzzword this year, but I think consumer duty is what’s going to be driving quite a lot of changes I think in terms of processes and what products that advisors are going to be selling. I’m definitely seeing a lot more of now with firms that if you’re not writing it you need to refer it. So hopefully that should help increase awareness and making sure that your clients are getting the right cover and getting cover in general really. So I definitely think that’s a big part to play in these changes, but I’m a big believer in what our platform can do to support them changes as well. Instead of, as I mentioned before, you’ve got evidence and all you calling around all your insurers and if advisors have got 10 to choose from, we’ve got a platform here that covers eight insurers to help you and support you with that. So yeah, I definitely see the consumer duty helping with that and helping advisors really and their clients.

Kathryn (30:55):

Absolutely. I mean I was going to say, whenever I’m speaking to people and doing say the training and stuff like that, a key thing for me, and I think it’s really important that our advisors think this is that we don’t need just to say what we’ve done. We need to say what we’ve not done exactly and then what we’ve not done is just as important. So when somebody’s using your system, any system and they’re going right, I’ve put life and kick in just like a little thing on little I just going, but why not IP kind of thing. So why mean an IP there? And it’s important that advisors really change that mindset because as you say, that’s exactly where we’re going to be for the consumer.

Katie (31:28):

And I think that we probably don’t talk about this enough, but there’s documentation in there that instead of an advisor ringing it up and calling an insurer and getting a reference number and typing it all out because you do have to evidence what you are doing. There’s a document there in our system that goes, well actually this insurer accepts this one doesn’t, this one’s rated because of this one needs a GP report. That’s it. Job done with eight insurers. So that’s a huge time saving element for advisors.

Kathryn (31:53):

Absolutely. So as we’re coming towards the end of the podcast, what’s the latest thing then for underwrite me? I know we’ve talked about what we expect the market to do, the insurers to do, advisors to do, but what are you guys doing in the next year or so? Is there anything that you want to share or is everything super secret?

Steve (32:09):

No, I don’t think there’s any secret about it. I mean, yeah, I think what I alluded to a moment ago, we’re looking at how we serve clients who fall out of the process. So at the moment, about 80% of clients get through the underwrite Me process or get at least one price from at least one insurer, which is fantastic, but what about the other 20%? We focus so much on the front end, but what about the 20%? They fall out and perhaps have to wait six weeks for a GPR. So it’s those products we’re building will be coming to market with insurers next year in terms of automating that process, making it much, much quicker, making the underwriting of it much, much more efficient. We know that the minute a customer drops off the phone call or walks out the office that the chances of them buying that product start falling dramatically and we see after a week it falls off a cliff. After two weeks it’s almost gone completely. So if we can keep customers in that process while the advisors talking to them as much as possible, we can continue to help advisors make those sales. So we’re doing a lot of work with the insurers in terms of trying to automate, trying to do our best for that 20% who fall out that initial automated process

(33:27):

And mean claims as well.

Kathryn (33:28):

I was going to say that, I’m really happy to hear that because obviously clearly I tend to work with the people that would be in the 20%, so anything we can do to help that side of things, but even better. So Katie, did you have something you wanted to share?

Katie (33:39):

Probably just to let advisors know that we are working on research tools to be implemented into the protection platform. So currently at the moment we do have defacto compare. There was a press release out a few weeks ago, that Protection Guru is actually going to be integrated into our system, so watch out for that. Potentially another research system. I can’t say too much yet, but we

Kathryn (34:04):

Do have a secret.

Katie (34:07):

We do. I dunno whether it’s going to be live by the time this comes up, but hey I’m sure we’ll be shouting about it. So yeah, keep your eyes out for that for sure.

Kathryn (34:16):

Absolutely. Fantastic. And where can people find you if they’re wanting to get these demos and things, Katie?

Katie (34:21):

Yeah, so for anybody who’s not seen a protection platform, we do daily demos Monday to Friday at 12:00 PM If you go on underwrite me.co uk you’ll see where you can register for them. It’s just a quick 30 minute demo with an account manager. So please as many questions that you need then just ask in the demo. One thing to mention as well, this platform is free for advisors to use. It does not cost you anything, so it’s worth getting registered and getting set up. Yeah,

Kathryn (34:54):

Fantastic. Okay then. Well thank you both so much for joining me. Thank you everybody for listening. We’re going to be back next time with Matt Van and be diving into prostate cancer and what a diagnosis of this can mean to getting protection insurance. Always remember that you can visit the website practical protection.co uk and on there you can get your CPD certificate. Thank you to our sponsors, the Okta members, Steve, Katie, thank you so much for joining me. It’s been a pleasure to have you.

Katie (35:19):

Oh, thank you so much.

Steve (35:21):

Thank you very much. Bye bye-Bye.

 

Transcript Disclaimer:

Episodes of the Practical Protection Podcast include a transcript of the episode’s audio. The text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record.

We often discuss health and medical conditions in relation to protection insurance and underwriting, always consult with a healthcare professional if you are concerned about any medical conditions and symptoms we have covered in any episode.