Practical Protection

Practical Protection

On Posted on by Practical Protection to podcast, Season 12, Uncategorized

Episode 2 – Think Outside the Box

Hi, everybody, instead of doing a health deep dive, Alan had the great idea of doing an episode on being imaginative with client recommendations. There are lots of ways to build protection recommendations, a lot of the time it’s straightforward, but sometimes getting creative is necessary. I would like to make sure I’m clear that being creative must still be compliance approved!

In this episode I am giving you insights into the following areas and some examples of the insurances that are set up this way.

The key takeaways:

  • Decreasing term insurance vs family income benefit
  • Ways to address delays with GPs and medicals
  • Splitting critical illness across multiple providers
  • Joint Life Second Death vs Single Life policies
  • Life of another cover for non-UK residents
  • Layering income protection policies
  • Insurance solutions for gift planning

Alan will be back with me next time for a deep dive into a medical condition and how it’s underwritten for protection insurance. We are always happy to take your suggestions on what to cover so please feel free to fire over any areas that you would like us to go into.

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 PlannerX.

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Kathryn Knowles 0:24

Hi everybody, it is me again. It’s just me today, and I am going to be taking you through ways to possibly think outside the box when it comes to arranging protection insurance in the UK. This is the Practical Protection Podcast. Now, it is extremely hot today, on the day that I’m recording, so you’ll need to forgive me if there’s a little pause every now and then while I am taking a sip of water, just to make sure that I could can get through it all without my mouth and my throat completely going and my voice losing it part way through. So today I’m going to take you through some really key areas, just give us a summary of what we’re going to be doing, is things like looking at decreasing life versus foreign income benefit, how to sort of like address, well, potentially do options that can help if your clients are needing potentially medicals or GPRs, and the reasons why we’d maybe do multiple critical illness policies, some joint life, second death versus single life cover, life of another policies for people who were non-UK residents, layering income protection policies. Don’t know if people are sort of like looking into that, and also different ways of doing gift inter vivos. Now I have sort of gone over some of these before into a certain level, but most of these are quite new, the areas that I’m covering, and hopefully be really useful. It’s all about giving sort of like a slightly different option, a slightly different route for clients. As always, you give them the more sort of like general standard approach in a way, but then there’s nothing wrong with being a bit inventive, of being a bit creative. Now, when I’m saying inventive and creative, I also very, very much mean compliance as well. So, obviously, we never do anything that would cause any issues, cause any risks. I mean, there’s always risks, depending upon what you do and don’t do, because all of the advice is subjective. But if we have clear reasoning as to why we’ve done something a certain way, then obviously we should be, should be fine in what we’re doing. So, let’s get into it. So, decreasing life insurance versus family income benefits start with. So, decreasing life insurance decree does exactly what it says, it’s decreasing in terms of value over time, it’s usually used for mortgages. It wouldn’t be usually used for, like, a in a sense, in a family income benefit style policy. So, just to explain what that is, despite the name, it says income, it is usually life and or critical illness cover, but I’m just going to do it from the version of life insurance, just so I don’t have to keep saying life and or critical illness cover each time. So, what you do with a family income benefit is you would insure a certain amount of money on that person’s life for a certain amount of years, so it could be that you do 20,000 pounds life insurance, as an example of 18 years, to quite common that would be to say, right. Well, we’re going to put this in place to help raise the children. This is obviously a good amount of money compared to this person’s income, you know. So, basically, it’s almost like replacing their income to the household if they were to pass away, and just help to raise the children. It might be things like some people use it to cover private, private school fees to cover what they envisage will be university fees going forward with things like that. Now, what’s interesting about family income benefits is that essentially it is a decreasing life insurance policy.

Kathryn Knowles 3:53

Now, I know some compliance people and some product development people, some I will now be shock, horror, and absolutely astounded that I’ve just said that, but it kind of is, and the reason that we say that is because whatever the summer showed is each year, if you multiply that by the amount of years, that’s essentially what the kitty starts off with, and then after, I shouldn’t say kitty, could I, because that could make it sound like gambling, that’s essentially what the amount of insurance is to start off with, if there was a claim from like day one, and then each year the value of that pot of money is reduced by however much you’ve insured by, so I’m going to be looking at, I’m going to give two options, in a sense of 15,000 family income benefit, and also a 30,000 as well, so if we have a look at, say, as an example, the 30,000 over 21 years, that’s a summer showed of 630,000 that’s going to reduce by 30,000 each year as we get closer and closer to that policy end date. I hope that makes sense, but yeah, there’s lots and lots. Of stuff that you can do to read about that, if that doesn’t make too much sense, but anyway, what you could do as difference, and this is an alternative, and I would say that you give the client probably both options, obviously you would usually recommend that they would go to one of the options, but you know you can give them both options to look at, is you can do a family income benefit, and but you could also do a decreasing life insurance with what is known as a 0% decrease rate. So essentially it is going to reduce each year at the same kind of amount as the family income benefit would do. Now there’s advantages and disadvantages, so let’s go through them. So, if we do the decreasing life insurance instead of family income benefit, the advantages is that it’s often cheaper to do it that way. It isn’t always, but it can be a lot of the time it can be cheaper, and the other key thing as well, is that you get the money upfront and can then invest it, and if you wanted to invest it and use it over time, so you know if it was a family income benefit, and let’s say again, you know, somebody had passed that day one of the policy starting, I know that was very unlikely, but let’s just say that for easy math in my head, while we’re doing this, and then that would mean, you know, we would trigger 30,000 each year for, for the next 21 years, in that example I gave, whereas if it was a decreasing life, we would get 630,000 so we’re getting a lump sum of money that we can do something with, so we can possibly put it aside, let it grow, which would be really, really advantageous in this situation, there is a disadvantage, though, that there’s a couple of disadvantages. You can’t RPI link it because you’re doing decreasing life insurance, whereas the family can benefit, you can RPI link, you can do increasing, so its value over time will obviously grow, and there’s also the risk that the person receives the money and just has an absolute field day and has spends it all on xyz, makes some poor choices, and the money actually disappears. So, that would be something that would be a huge risk, but I would say is, and it’s very important to try and do this. Is obviously, if you’re a financial advisor, you would obviously just give them lots of guidance on what not to do. And if you’re someone who isn’t a financial advisor, then if they do get that kind of a payout, then just make sure that you know you advocate that they do speak to a financial advisor to really give them some support. It could also, as well, limit access to some state benefits if they were to get that lump sum of money, and there’s even things like, you know, with children going to university, once you have a certain amount of income, or things like that, that obviously it can limit the kind of support they can get financially, and in terms of student loans, things like that.

Kathryn Knowles 7:52

So, so just obviously be very mindful, it isn’t obviously, even though it’s cheaper, and there is those advantages that we could put it aside, let it grow. There is also those cons to it as well, but the other thing as well, just to bear in mind, is that with family income benefits, the insurer tends to sort of set underwriting limits more around 60 to 75% of the summer showed, rather than the full amount, whereas decreasing after a full amount, so if we say in a sense looked at a million pounds again, just to help me with my math, so million pounds, if it was decreasing life insurance policy, you would be looking at the underwriting limits being set to a million pounds, so for obviously quite a lot of people would be starting to get towards the territory of maybe needing a medical or a GP report, just a standard for that amount of insurance due to their age or the, and the amount of insurance that they’re wanting to take out. Now, a family can benefit in that situation. The insurer be looking more towards assessing somewhere between, sorry, looking at 670 150,000 so that might keep it under those limits in terms of a GP report or medical being triggered, so there’s pros and cons to both options, so it’s, but it’s just worthwhile knowing that that is a potential option that you could look at, and it’s just a slightly different way of thinking of things, and obviously, as well, if the budget is quite tight, then that might just allow the client to consider something like that more. So, let’s have a look at an example, or two examples, actually. And because these examples show how it can be different depending upon the amount of insurance it’s going for, so looking at a 34 year old non smoker, and let’s say they want 15,000 pounds a year from income benefit over 21 years, so that would be eight pound and 22 pence per month. Now, a decreasing life insurance of 315,000 over 21 years, because we’ve took the 15 and times it by 21 at a 0% decrease rate, would be eight pound and five pence per month. It’s not. Not a huge saving on this, but to be honest, I’ve been doing examples for all of these to try and make sure that I could get some really up to date figures for everybody, and I couldn’t keep going through the numbers anymore. So that’s just to show that in this instance, you know, you can potentially save money that way. And then there is that the decreasing life in this one is cheaper, you’ve got the potentially potential to invest the money, do good stuff with it, but then also it’s not that much difference to pay for the fib, and then at least you know you’ve got that consistent income over time, which can be a really nice security for a lot of people. So, good, good words for good reasons for both of them. Hopefully, that all makes sense. Now we’re going to look at what’s known as splitting. Well, I’m calling it splitting policies. I don’t know if everyone else would, but it’s what I’m saying. So, on this one, I’m looking at the underwriting turnaround times. You know, they are getting better, but we all know, and insurers have absolutely been holding their hands up and saying we are taking a long time to underwrite. Now, one of the biggest reasons for that is obviously things like GP reports. Now, especially, we’re getting things like IGPRs and electronic records, and things which are absolutely brilliant in some ways, because they often come back far more quickly than ones where the docs has to manually fill it in, which is great.

Kathryn Knowles 11:24

The problem is, is that a lot of the time the underwriters are now having to go through hundreds of pages, so whereas they used to, it used to take a while to get it to them, but they maybe have five pages to look through, they’re now getting it maybe within a week, but there’s so, so much data now, insurers are using and starting to integrate as quickly as possible in general some levels of AI that goes through the report, strips out the main things that are needed, and then an underwriter obviously looks at what that information is, but it is taking time to go through that, make sure that the insurers, the reinsurers are happy with how the data is being summarized, that the AI is getting it right, and you know, obviously, while they’re testing that, there still needs to be an underwriter, in a sense, doing everything that exactly the computer is doing, but double checking and backing up what the AI is doing, but it is getting there, and we have seen some big reductions in turnaround times with the insurers, and, but it can obviously, it can take weeks, it can take months, and, and that’s not obviously great, and sometimes, you know, especially, you know, I’ve certainly seen it, I think I might have spoken about this before on the podcast, but you know, we’ve had it a few times where a GP surgery has come back to the insurer and said, you know, because they have like a set price that they’re prepared to pay towards GP reports to the insurers, and you know, doctor surgeries are usually, you know, fine about that. It’s a nice price that they get paid to do it, and but there are some GP surgeries that will turn and say, well, at that price we’re telling you now, we’re going to wait six months before we even look at this, and that has just absolutely floored me when we’ve seen that. And then they’ll say, and if you want it in three months, it’s this price more within two, and the price goes up so high, and it’s to be honest, it is ridiculous. And if there’s no, you can kind of see why the insurers in that situation go, no, you know, because if they’re not going to pay that extra, because they don’t know in terms of what kind of return they’ll get, things like that, and actually the the amount of money that goes into paying for GP reports that then don’t actually turn into business, and that is even from insurers offering terms, potentially sometimes even standard terms, and people still not going ahead, is actually quite phenomenal. So you can see why they didn’t want to just be paying even extra, but even if we don’t have all of that, in a sense, GPS and medicals, even if it goes exactly as we want standard terms, everything comes through quite quickly, it’s still, it’s still time, and it’s still things you know. Not everybody wants to wait. A lot of people are super, super busy, and they want this done here and now. So, what you could potentially do is split the amount of insurance that you’re wanting across multiple insurers. You know, obviously, the advantage with that is if we’re not triggering GP reports and medicals. I’m assuming here there’s no risks that would cause those things, so let’s just say we’re quite standard straight through applications. Then what you’re doing is you’re able to start the policy straight away, and there’s some real advantages to that. The advantage is obviously that the client is getting covered straight away, which is perfect. That is exactly what we want to happen. It’s been to be insured as soon as possible. The disadvantage is that obviously, if you’re splitting it across different insurers, it’s quite likely that the overall monthly premium is going to be slightly more expensive than if they were to just do it all with one insurer, it’s not usually too big a too big a difference, but.

Kathryn Knowles 14:59

But you know it is something that you would need to put forward and say look we can do it this way, where we go with one and it’s going to cost this much, or we can go across a couple and we can start straight away not cost this much, but there is other things that we could look at as well, so another thing is that let’s say that you know the client does really need a higher amount that is going to trigger GPRS and medicals. What you could do is put a policy in place that keeps it within the underwriting limits, so there’s no GPR, there’s no medical, and the policy starts straight away. And then what you could then do is apply for the full amount of insurance with the intention to replace the original one, or potentially even just do a top up, in a sense, to the amount that you want with the second policy. There is quite a big advantage with this. Now, this is on the assumption that I’m very, very clear here. I want to be super, super clear, I’m making this assumption on the client having no risks, they have no knowledge of any risk and no reasonable knowledge at all that there would be any risk that they would need to declare to the insurer, so we’re going to use this example of saying, right, so they have put, let’s say, 500,000 forward to the insurer, it was within the limits, and we’ve actually then applied for, say, 600,000 which was in the realm of triggering GPRS and medicals. Now we’ve gone for this for the 600,000 and the medical has come back, GPR is fine, but the medical has come back and said that there’s actually something in the urine, maybe, or the blood pressure is a bit high, which would actually mean that the insurer would postpone that 600,000 pound policy, now very clear that the person didn’t have any knowledge about this, they’ve not needed to go for blood pressure check ever before, they’ve had no symptoms, which often does happen with blood pressure, and they’ve had nothing wrong with, they’ve had no discomfort, you know, about in terms of the thing with the urine or anything like that. So, based upon the rules, that 500,000 pound policy is fine, and it’s in place. They had no knowledge that meant they shouldn’t have taken out that policy. Now there’s been a medical, they are aware, so the new policy would be postponed, but they have that 500,000 pound in place, and it’s safe, it’s secure. That can be a really, really positive way of doing things. I say, you might want to do it where you do that, where you put within the limits, and then you apply for the full amount, or it might be that you say just do like a top up for the extra amount. The top up would mean that you would need to, it would be slightly more expensive, because you’d be doing the two policies, but it’s certainly worth considering. So, let’s look at some examples. Okay, of how that would work. So, I’m going to do this time a 44 year old non smoker. They’re taking out, well, they need level 1000 level life insurance of 600,000 over 24 years, and this is going to trigger the medical, the 500,000 doesn’t, so we put in place 500,000 pounds of life insurance, and it’s at 44 pounds and 80 pence per month. So let’s just give an example. Option one, we then apply for the 600,000 we get it, and it’s just one policy that’s 51 pounds and 94 pence. Now option two, we can keep the 500,000 top up with an extra 100,000 that would take the total to around 56 pound 31 so it is about five pound per month, dearer to do it with a top up than to just do a brand new one, so again, you would just need to look, because I’m giving these as examples, but it changes so much with each client, and some assures, just keep an eye on it.

Kathryn Knowles 19:02

The other thing, as well, that can be useful with doing it this way, is that let’s say there isn’t a postpone, but let’s say there’s a rating, you might say apply for the 500,000 apply for the 600,000 but there’s maybe a plus 50 plus 50% put on the premium of the 600,000 Well, then what you do is you keep the 500,000 in place, and then reduce that app that you’ve done for 600,000 to a summer short of 100,000 that so you’re making what you need, but you’re only going to have the plus 50 on the premium for that 100,000 rather than going ahead with a 600,000 that has a plus 50 on all of it. That’s a really, really good outcome for the clients, and you do also, as well, have things like with this Royal London, do have their underwrite later system that you can potentially look at as well. I won’t go into that in this podcast, but do feel free, obviously, to have a look at that and what they’re able to offer. You can have a good Google on that, which can again work really, really well in some. Situations, I’m going to go now onto multiple critical illness policies here. So, there is argument to potentially do critical illness policies with multiple insurers. Now, it is nice to have it all with one insurer, so that it’s just nice and straightforward, but each insurer does have their own perks and advantages, you know, you might want to look in, because obviously compliance, I always want us to look at the cheapest, so you might want to look at the cheapest, so let’s say Scottish Widows, they’re often one of the ones that is usually at the lower end on the pricing, but then you think, hang on, they don’t have private medical insurance. It isn’t private medical insurance, but that value added benefit with maybe Aviva, the global treatment, or Zoic accelerate option. They both those add-ons, the value added benefits, both give access to enhanced medical treatments outside the UK. If a policyholder is sort of like diagnosed with something, or obviously, if a child’s covered, if they’re diagnosed with something that fits within the criteria, they’ll, they’ll get taken to another country if the best treatments outside the UK, and it’s them and a loved one, they’re completely looked after, it’s paid for, they’re brought back to the UK, the Zurich one does specific, like genetic sequencing of the cancer, so it allows better targeted treatment, which is fantastic. So you might want to look at that. So maybe you know it might be that you do the majority of the policy with someone who’s cheaper, but then do a smaller policy with someone else to access those value added benefits with the very, very, very, very, very clear statements that the value added benefits are not contractual and they could be removed at any point, so that is a potential risk that you sort of like set part of it up with a slightly more expensive insurer to access evaluated benefit that in the future maybe goes, so really, really keep an eye on that and keep an eye on your wording too, and but in terms of different insurers, obviously you have things like society like Guardian or Vitality Life, they have a very specific heart attack definition, which is enhanced compared to the rest of the market, so a lot of the time got a goal, a little bit underwriting here, and claims-ish, and so with heart attack, it is often to do with the amount of what’s known as troponin in your blood levels to show that you have had a heart attack.

Kathryn Knowles 22:19

Now, with a lot of insurers, it says, you know, heart attack of a specified severity, which means your troponin must have reached a certain level, and we don’t know what that level is, you know, it is something that we don’t get told that, and so you don’t know what this insurer over here might set theirs at this number, but this one over here sets it lower, or maybe even higher, so it’s really hard to know, guardian vitality, just say if you’ve been told you have a heart attack with pain, which is absolutely brilliant, especially since heart attack is one of the key areas of a claim, so you’ve got that as a potential advantage to consider. You then have things that, obviously, vitality life again, instead of critical illness, is severity based, a serious illness cover, and it is a situation, obviously, with theirs as well. You can do the multiplier, which means that you can potentially, for a bit more, almost triple or double the amount of claims, sorry, value of the policy. It’s very.. I was gonna say it’s very, very complicated. I just mean critical illness versus serious illness cover. It’s all very, very complicated, but just that you know there are different things, but a really key thing here as well is that you could then have multiple children’s critical illness benefit, which is obviously really, really positive, and so children’s critical illness cover is usually around 25% of the summer showed maximum, and to like a maximum of 25,000 pounds, and whichever is the hang on, which I’m going to say low or higher, which one, whichever one you hit first, basically as to which one it is, so like if you had a 25,000 pound policy as an adult that it would be 25% of that, you wouldn’t then get a 25,000 kind of thing, or if it was say 200,000 200,000 pound policy, you wouldn’t get 25% you’d get a max 25k That’s probably the best way for me to say it. So, let’s have a look here at this. So, an example: 37 year old non smoker, 250,000 life and critical illness cover over 14 years. As an example, I’m going to say kick and sick is intertwined here, by the way, and we’re doing that over 14 years to kids of an age of independence. So, if we do it all with one insurer, it is 66 pound 34 pence per month on the cheapest on the market. But let’s look at multiple policies. Okay, so we’ve got 125,002 policies. The total for that is 79 pounds and 58 pence per month, so we are jumping there about 13 pounds per month, but we now have an extra 25,000 children’s critical illness cover. We have access to different conditions, different definitions, different severities, which is important. We’ve got potential access to those add on value added benefits, which could be asked absolutely. Normal for families, they can’t afford private medical insurance. These value-added benefits are not private medical insurance. We say the global treatment with Aviva, the accelerate with Eurek, but they are giving them access to enhanced medical support, which in a much more budget-friendly option than setting up a policy, and then also setting up a separate private medical insurance. Ideal world, they would obviously have private medical insurance as well. Again, hope that makes sense now. Joint life, second death versus single life. I am sure I’ve gone through this before, but let’s have a look again. So, joint knife, second death, it’s usually for inheritance tax planning. It is where we are putting in place a summer shorts to cover the 40% inheritance tax, potentially for a, obviously, for a family, and it will pay out once both policyholders have passed. Now, what can happen, which is brilliant, is that let’s say we have two people for the joint knife second death, but one of them’s a decline or a postpone, which means they’re not going to get to cover right now, because it is joint knife second death, and please forgive me for being so blunt about this, but I’ve only got a certain amount of time to keep your attention and keep you entertained, so I need to be quite direct, if that person, one of them, is postponed or potential decline, the insurer is going to assume, in a sense, that they’re going to pass away first.

Kathryn Knowles 26:31

There’s something there that means that they’re not going to insure them, because they think the risk is too high. This person making a claim, in a sense, and that’s why they would be sat in that criteria and so they look at it, then if the other person is a standard life, so that means that there’s no risk ratings. What they can potentially do is cover the decline life under what is known as a notional decline, which basically means well, this policy pays out once the second person passes, we’re not prepared to insure this person individually, but we’re happy to have them named on this policy, because we, in the broad scheme of things, we assume that they will be the first one to go, so actually it makes no difference to us if they are on the policy, but then the insurer does something different, so it does mean yes, this person can be insured, and initially you think, “Oh, amazing, and it is, is actually amazing, but then the price of it becomes a single life pricing. Now, there is a lot of technicalities around the background of this, which I don’t fully understand, so I just take it as it is, but a joint life second death policy is often massively cheaper than a single life policy. It’s usually well, when I’ve been generally doing it’s around a third of a price of a single life policy. So, what we’re going to do, so instead of joint life second death, where we’re about a third of the price, which it’s a joint life second death, but priced on one person, so it’s a lot, it’s a lot more, so I’ll show you that as an example, so then you get the idea of potentially from an advice point of view, so if they’re paying for both of them and it is the price of one person, why don’t I just set it up for one person? Now again, you might think that, go, because it’s a joint knife, second death. What are you on about, Kathryn? Bear with me. The reason being is, is that there’s all this assumption somewhere that this, no, this notional decline person is going to pass away first. But what happens if they don’t pass away first? There can be so many reasons why somebody wouldn’t pass away first, or if that’s the case, so let’s say we insure the person who is standard just on their own, same price whether or not we do that, or we cover them both now. So let’s say the person who has a notional decline lives the longest, and the other person does pass away sooner. Well, then the money pays out, but I hear you say, but Kathryn, the inheritance tax hasn’t been triggered. No, it hasn’t. The inheritance tax hasn’t been triggered yet. So, now the family has an opportunity, because this money has paid out well. We don’t know how long the notional decline might live for. It might be another 20 years. So, why not do something with that money? Why not invest it? Why not do something else? Obviously, investments always have risks and things like that. So, obviously, I appreciate again people shouting at me through the podcasting, but you don’t think the risks? Yes, I do. The risks, I’m obviously I’m very aware of Andre, and very aware of what I need to say, different things when I’m giving recommendations, and obviously work in conjunction with ifas when we do this kind of thing. So, why not do that with a very, very clear statement to the beneficiaries. If this pays out, the inheritance tax isn’t going to be due. You’re going to receive this money, you need to keep that somewhere very, very, very, very safe and not do anything with it. There’s no. Buying a house, there’s no going on a super, super year-round cruise or anything like that. You need to keep it safe. Now that is our recommendation, that is what we’re putting forward to them. If they then don’t follow that, then in a sense awfully it is kind of their own fault.

Kathryn Knowles 30:15

If they just blitz through that money, well, all they’re going to do is cause themselves an issue when the inheritance tax does occur, but we have that good opportunity to potentially make it grow to even help further with any additional growth in the estate and things like that, and the other benefit of this is, is that if we had done it as a joint knife, second death, so the notion of decline is alive. The standard life has now passed. The notional decline is going to have to keep paying the premiums on the joint life second death, so they’re going to have to keep paying out and out and out. And we’ve already established that they’re a notional decline, which means they probably have some kind of health condition that is making it difficult for them to get the insurance, so they might not be working, or they might need to be dipping into their funds more to be able to support them, due to the need to for medications or adaptations to the home, or you know, extra trips to hospital, even sometimes things like, you know, specific support in terms of nutrition, or specific types of clothing, there’s so, so many different things that can happen, so there’s lots and lots of potential benefits. So I’m going to give an example on this. Okay, you do also have to be mindful that if this obviously this would be interest, we are not messing about this is absolute interest, no matter what we do. So if we’ve done it as a single life and it’s paid out early, there can be periodic charges every 10 years on that trust. So you do want to get that money out the trust. You don’t want to just leave it sat there. So again, we would want to make sure that financial advisors are involved to give that guidance and what to do. So let’s take an example. So we’ve got two people in their mid 60s, they’re non smokers, so one is a notional decline, the guaranteed premium for 450,000 pounds of joint life, second death is 900 pound per month. It’s the exact same price if both of them are covered, or whether or not we do a single policy. Obviously, there are reviewable premiums that are cheaper. That’s not something that I generally, I would generally try and go for guaranteed rather than reviewable. I did have one, though, recently where I was just like, the reviewable absolutely is mixed, no, it’s a no-brainer to use a reviewable here, but what I would say, in case you’re not too familiar in this space, is that if you do do something like reviewable premium, I speak to a lot of people who’ve done reviewable premiums, and then they’ve reached the ages of 70s or their 80s, the premiums have gone up so, so much that they’re actually having to cancel the policies, and so the entire reason that it’s been set up to cover the IHT is then completely lost, because they just cannot afford to keep paying the premiums as they stand, and sometimes some people just are not prepared to pay the premiums. That’s also the case as well. So, if you do do reviewable premiums again, if you are working in this space and you’re not a financial advisor, strongly suggest that a financial advisor becomes involved, so that they can start taking and putting in place financial planning strategies to start to bring down the IHT amount that risk, so that hopefully as the reviews come in place, either the summer show can be reduced or potentially even the policy be canceled, because there’s been enough work done to avoid that.

Kathryn Knowles 33:35

You know, we do have it where some people put these things in place on a reviewable basis, and then they start, you know, really strategically doing some gift planning, and the intention is that then by the 10 years, when the reviews start to come in, they may not even need the policy, because the gifts have already started to go outside of those limits, that seven year limit that is associated with them, so it is just another thing to consider, so brilliant users, notional declines do mean that we can ensure both people, but we might still want to even look at doing as a single life, just because that price is exactly the same again, as long as you’re doing your advantages, your disadvantages, making it clear to the clients, you can then help them to make that informed decision. So, I’ve got a couple more now. I didn’t realize how much I’d actually have to natter, to be honest. So I do apologize. I’m wondering if I’m rambling a bit, because I’m certainly talking quite a bit. So then the next one is the life of another to cover UK non-residents. So that is one where I think a lot of people just go, “Oh, and definitely not, we need to go international. We don’t do international, we’re gonna have to get some more specialist in, obviously, if it does need international cover, you can speak to somebody like ourselves at Cura, that is something that we will work on, but you might be able to do life of another as well. So, usually that means that there is some kind of liability in the UK, generally a spouse, maybe children, sometimes we can maybe. Fern, do it where, as say, there is maybe a potential need to, if you’re one of the key people who is giving financial support to an elderly relative, maybe with care home fees, things like that. We just, we need to prove why, why there is that need here in the UK, and so I’ve not given examples of pricing on this, because the pricing wouldn’t be any different if this is available. Okay, and if you don’t need to go international, but a few companies can do it where they will do an insurance in the life of another basis, so that you know there is a person here in the UK, and they’re going to, they have a need to insure a person who is currently not resident in the UK for some kind of risk here, so this will be a nice quick one for me to go through. So let’s say, as an example, and this is something that we’ve done in a sense relatively recently, say relatively recently. So there’s somebody where the husband was working and living in Saudi Arabia, and the wife and son were based in the UK. A mortgage was being set upon a property, and you know there was going to be seen that the property in the UK, in a sense, was the main residence for the family. Yes, he wasn’t living here, but the wife and son were, and they really needed, he was the main breadwinner, bringing the most of the money to the family, and they really needed to be able to cover that, so what happened is that we arranged for the wife to take out a policy on the life of another basis. It can also be done by UK companies. Sometimes UK insurers can do it for a company if there is an employee that lives outside of the UK, who is a UK citizen, but non-UK resident. You do need to just be careful in terms of contracts of employment for that ineligibility. So, just be really careful, and just in general, going back to that personal side, it’s not generally used, can be used for IHT purposes, but for mortgage cover, where there is obviously a very, very clear need. It can be done if there is more of an IHT need.

Kathryn Knowles 37:07

Then again, it might just be going more to like an international side of things, but each case is completely individual, and at the moment there has been, especially if you go internationally, there’s been quite a reduction in what’s available at the moment internationally, just because there’s been quite a few things going on in different areas around the world, so there is, there is some hesitation with some areas at the moment, but, but it is still an option. Now, this next one, I think, is really interesting. I hope you find interesting too, layering income protection policies, there are some big advantages. There’s also some disadvantages, and I’m sure compliance people, again, will be shuddering and being going, “Why, why are you saying this, Kathryn? The amount of wording that’s going to need to be needed on this is phenomenal. Well, it can be a really good option for the client, so let’s just make sure that we’re being open about what’s available, because this can make a big, big difference between a client taking out a policy or not taking out a policy, so bear with me again. Income protection, why not do a budget income protection policy that has a max claim of one year, two years, five years, and then set up a second income protection policy, which has a deferred period matching the claim length of the first one, and have that being the full term one. So it’s often quite a bit cheaper to do it this way. Sometimes you can potentially also even access extra things, like, you know, some insurers do have some additional child benefits that come with their income protection policies. I’ve just had a little birdie from another insurer tell me that that’s going to be coming out soon with theirs as well. And, as I say, it could make a massive, massive difference. We know that a 52 week deferred period, let’s say, if we do the one year example, a 52 week deferred period is absolutely going to be a lot cheaper than going four weeks, so we do the budget IP on like a four week, and then have a 52 week one come in. Now, again, I hear some compliance people saying, oh, but then if there’s a four week, then this is going to cross over, so the 52 week can’t actually start for another month after that. So, actually, you’re giving the client an extra month’s worth of cover when they can’t access. Let’s just all be grown ups and sensibles here, sensibles sensible here, and just say, well, we would be very clear to the client about that, and say, look, by the time that this one kicks in here, when this one ends, then actually you are going a month over, however, this is the overall price saving, would you like to do that, and see what the client says, it’s a good recommendation, there are disadvantages, though. So, I need to be clear on this. So, as I say, you would do this with maybe a one year, two year, or five year claim, because we can do deferred periods to match all of those with a long term claim policy. There is a potential disadvantage, and this is really quite a disadvantage. Okay. So we’re not just going to run to this as an option, but it is just worth knowing. So let’s say somebody does exactly what I’ve just said, like I said, let’s say they’ve done a two year claim period, and on a budget one, and then we’ve got a deferred period kicking in at two years on a second long term policy. So let’s say they claim on that two year period, and they’re off work for a year, and they go back to work, but then a couple of months later they have to go back off work again, or reduced hours. The insurer might consider that claim to be connected, so it’s not restarting a new two year claim period, it’s going to continue it, so actually they’re not going to get another two years worth, but the insurer that we’ve done the two year deferred period with to end of, you know, end of claim in terms of that long term claim, they won’t start considering that claim.

Kathryn Knowles 41:02

until sort of like they’ll consider it from that kind of that second that continued claim start date on that first policy, so actually you know they’ll consider maybe that 1415 months after they’ve been unable to work, as you know, they’ve had to take that time off again from work, so that will be their starting point for their two year deferred period countdown. So the client might actually end up with some time where they are, they don’t have any income coming in, and that is obviously a very, very big disadvantage. There is a lot of wording you would need to be very clear and transparent about if you recommended that for clients, but let’s have a look at what this can potentially mean price wise, as I say, so take an example of a 32 year old non smoke, we’ve got very straightforward job here, there’s no risks, so income protection of 2750 pound per month to age 68 we’re going to do a full claim from a four week deferred period. The price of that is 57 pounds and 13 pence per month. Now, what we’re going to do instead is do a one year budget, which is, sorry, a claim year, sorry, budget IP with a claim of one year, and that costs eight pounds 62 pence per month to then top it up with a 52 week deferred that has a full term claim, and that’s 24 pounds 17 pence per month, so overall 32 pounds 79 pence per month, so we’re saving about 25 pounds per month by doing it as a budget IP followed by a full term IP, now with that one year claim period, as well. We are starting to make it not as intense if there was a connected claim, hopefully, depending on the timings, you know. Obviously, it certainly wouldn’t be as intense as if there was maybe a five year waiting period, things like that, but it is just still there, so pros are that it is quite a lot cheaper, it’s almost half the price to do it that way, which does mean it could make it affordable to some people, as the long-term claim might just mean that they walk away and don’t put the IP in place, but we do just have to be super clear about those connected claims, potentially. Now, for the last one, I’m going to go through. Okay, so gift inter vivos. I know I’ve definitely done this one before, but it’s definitely worth going through. So, LV are the only insurer in the UK market at the moment that offer the true gift inter vivos policies. There are specific benefits of doing a true gift inter vivos, and so they are a good one to look at, but the underwriting might not work out with LV, you know, sometimes they aren’t able to insure people when other insurers are. You can also find, as well, that it can sometimes be quite a bit more expensive than looking at other options, and again, we would just need to be clear to the clients, the advantage of this one is because it does this, this, this, and this, but the advantage of this one over there is it does this, this, and this, and also obviously the disadvantages. So we have a couple of options, we have been the situation of gifts, we could do gift inter vivos, we could do a level term policy, and then just manually reduce it at set times over the seven years. All we could do what some insurers call a gift inter vivos solution, and just to be clear, if they call it a gift inter vivos solution, it’s, and they’re not LV, they’re not doing a gift inter vivos, they’re just doing what I’m saying now, but making it sound prettier is you take the 40% tax that would be on the gift divided by five, so you get 20% times five times, and then you arrange policies for 3456, and seven years, so that it roughly correlates with that taper, so.

Kathryn Knowles 44:59

It correlates with the taper over the term, but obviously the summer show, depending on what happens if there’s any changes to the gift taxing rules, it should mirror what the insurance, what the HMRC, and everybody would want, but we just need to be clear on that, but then I say sometimes it can be cheaper just to do a level term life policy, and whilst the it doesn’t have the protect some of the additional protections that come with the gift inter vivos policy, which is to do with, you know, if there are certain changes to the gift tax rules, the LV policy will kind of automatically adapt to those and give extra support, there are still some, some good options, so it can potentially be cheaper, not always, but can be, and you can then also you can reduce the summer short as you go along at the three year, four year, five years, six years, and now the insurer, in a sense, isn’t they’re not going to stop you, because ultimately it reduces the risk for them. They’ll be quite happy to have less risk. There might be a bit like, oh, seriously, you know, admin work kind of thing, but it does really, really reduce the risk of the insurer, so that, so they will do it. But you can also choose to just keep it at the full amount if you wanted to for seven years, because then, yes, it’ll pay off the gift, but then the family has extra to maybe cover funeral costs to maybe just have a bit extra. There’s nothing wrong with that. And again, you would just give the choice. So, let’s have a look at an example. As always, so 59 year old non smokers. So, a gift inter vivos policy of 5 million over seven years would be around 773 pounds per month, just a little under now. If we did a level term life insurance policy of 5 million over seven years, the premium is around 751 pounds per month. So we’re saving 20 pound a month by doing it level rather than tapering over time, and, and you know, as obviously the gift tapers, that’s that’s potentially quite, quite a good outcome for the client if we don’t reduce the summer showed, but then also, as well, if we do reduce the summer showed, a gift into Vos is just going to stay at that price, whereas if we have the level and reduce the summer showed at those time periods, the premium is going to come down, so become more cost effective over time, it’s worth considering, and then I also did an option as well to show the five policies where there are five policies at 20% of the tax value with a policy length of three to seven years. Now that one comes across even cheaper in this instance, so that one is around 671 pounds per month. So on that one, let me do a quick math, we saw on that one, we’re saving nearly 80 pound a month compared to the level term, and we’re saving 100 pound a month compared to the gift inter vivos. So it’s certainly worth having a look at those three options. Now, what I would say is, don’t make any assumptions, because I look at doing this quite regularly for clients, and it is not consistent, um, I had one, I’ve not bought as an example, but I had one where the five policies and the gift inter vivos were both more expensive than doing the level term, and then you know, I’ve had it before where the gift inter vivos was cheaper than doing the others, so it is absolutely hit and miss as to what is going to be easiest to do, but you know, certainly it is something to just be mindful of, that there is more than one solution when we’re looking at these things, and it can make quite a bit of difference to the premiums and things like that. So that is it. I hope it’s been okay. I hope I’ve not. I don’t know, boggled the minds too much in terms of just throwing out numbers and different things. I’m always really conscious when I write numbers, and you know, so I give all information because I kind of feel like my eyes would glaze over.

Kathryn Knowles 48:51

So, I hope your eyes haven’t glazed over too much. And I keep saying each time that Alan’s going to be coming back next time to do a medical deep dive, and that is the plan for next time, we thought about doing it this time, but then Alan had this idea about doing thinking outside the box, and I was like, that actually sounds like it’d be really, really helpful for people in terms of how to build recommendations for clients in different ways and look at different solutions. These are just a few examples of different solutions that you can do, and obviously, protection insurance is very, very complex, and you know I hope that this is just shown in a sense exactly what a protection specialist can do in terms of finding those creative ways to overcome some of the obstacles that we can face, so next time the intention is that we are going to be back doing a deep dive on some kind of risk, and as always, if you would like to get a CPD certificate, please visit the website, www.practical-protection.co.uk and you can get one there using the very, very simple form. Thanks to our sponsors, Planner X. Thank you so much, everybody. I will speak to you soon. 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.

Episode 2 - Think Outside the Box

Hi, everybody, instead of doing a health deep dive, Alan had the great idea of doing an episode on being imaginative with client recommendations. There are lots of ways to build protection recommendations, a lot of the time it’s straightforward, but sometimes getting creative is necessary. I would like to make sure I’m clear that being creative must still be compliance approved!

In this episode I am giving you insights into the following areas and some examples of the insurances that are set up this way.

The key takeaways:

  • Decreasing term insurance vs family income benefit
  • Ways to address delays with GPs and medicals
  • Splitting critical illness across multiple providers
  • Joint Life Second Death vs Single Life policies
  • Life of another cover for non-UK residents
  • Layering income protection policies
  • Insurance solutions for gift planning

Alan will be back with me next time for a deep dive into a medical condition and how it’s underwritten for protection insurance. We are always happy to take your suggestions on what to cover so please feel free to fire over any areas that you would like us to go into.

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 PlannerX.

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Kathryn Knowles 0:24

Hi everybody, it is me again. It's just me today, and I am going to be taking you through ways to possibly think outside the box when it comes to arranging protection insurance in the UK. This is the Practical Protection Podcast. Now, it is extremely hot today, on the day that I'm recording, so you'll need to forgive me if there's a little pause every now and then while I am taking a sip of water, just to make sure that I could can get through it all without my mouth and my throat completely going and my voice losing it part way through. So today I'm going to take you through some really key areas, just give us a summary of what we're going to be doing, is things like looking at decreasing life versus foreign income benefit, how to sort of like address, well, potentially do options that can help if your clients are needing potentially medicals or GPRs, and the reasons why we'd maybe do multiple critical illness policies, some joint life, second death versus single life cover, life of another policies for people who were non-UK residents, layering income protection policies. Don't know if people are sort of like looking into that, and also different ways of doing gift inter vivos. Now I have sort of gone over some of these before into a certain level, but most of these are quite new, the areas that I'm covering, and hopefully be really useful. It's all about giving sort of like a slightly different option, a slightly different route for clients. As always, you give them the more sort of like general standard approach in a way, but then there's nothing wrong with being a bit inventive, of being a bit creative. Now, when I'm saying inventive and creative, I also very, very much mean compliance as well. So, obviously, we never do anything that would cause any issues, cause any risks. I mean, there's always risks, depending upon what you do and don't do, because all of the advice is subjective. But if we have clear reasoning as to why we've done something a certain way, then obviously we should be, should be fine in what we're doing. So, let's get into it. So, decreasing life insurance versus family income benefits start with. So, decreasing life insurance decree does exactly what it says, it's decreasing in terms of value over time, it's usually used for mortgages. It wouldn't be usually used for, like, a in a sense, in a family income benefit style policy. So, just to explain what that is, despite the name, it says income, it is usually life and or critical illness cover, but I'm just going to do it from the version of life insurance, just so I don't have to keep saying life and or critical illness cover each time. So, what you do with a family income benefit is you would insure a certain amount of money on that person's life for a certain amount of years, so it could be that you do 20,000 pounds life insurance, as an example of 18 years, to quite common that would be to say, right. Well, we're going to put this in place to help raise the children. This is obviously a good amount of money compared to this person's income, you know. So, basically, it's almost like replacing their income to the household if they were to pass away, and just help to raise the children. It might be things like some people use it to cover private, private school fees to cover what they envisage will be university fees going forward with things like that. Now, what's interesting about family income benefits is that essentially it is a decreasing life insurance policy.

Kathryn Knowles 3:53

Now, I know some compliance people and some product development people, some I will now be shock, horror, and absolutely astounded that I've just said that, but it kind of is, and the reason that we say that is because whatever the summer showed is each year, if you multiply that by the amount of years, that's essentially what the kitty starts off with, and then after, I shouldn't say kitty, could I, because that could make it sound like gambling, that's essentially what the amount of insurance is to start off with, if there was a claim from like day one, and then each year the value of that pot of money is reduced by however much you've insured by, so I'm going to be looking at, I'm going to give two options, in a sense of 15,000 family income benefit, and also a 30,000 as well, so if we have a look at, say, as an example, the 30,000 over 21 years, that's a summer showed of 630,000 that's going to reduce by 30,000 each year as we get closer and closer to that policy end date. I hope that makes sense, but yeah, there's lots and lots. Of stuff that you can do to read about that, if that doesn't make too much sense, but anyway, what you could do as difference, and this is an alternative, and I would say that you give the client probably both options, obviously you would usually recommend that they would go to one of the options, but you know you can give them both options to look at, is you can do a family income benefit, and but you could also do a decreasing life insurance with what is known as a 0% decrease rate. So essentially it is going to reduce each year at the same kind of amount as the family income benefit would do. Now there's advantages and disadvantages, so let's go through them. So, if we do the decreasing life insurance instead of family income benefit, the advantages is that it's often cheaper to do it that way. It isn't always, but it can be a lot of the time it can be cheaper, and the other key thing as well, is that you get the money upfront and can then invest it, and if you wanted to invest it and use it over time, so you know if it was a family income benefit, and let's say again, you know, somebody had passed that day one of the policy starting, I know that was very unlikely, but let's just say that for easy math in my head, while we're doing this, and then that would mean, you know, we would trigger 30,000 each year for, for the next 21 years, in that example I gave, whereas if it was a decreasing life, we would get 630,000 so we're getting a lump sum of money that we can do something with, so we can possibly put it aside, let it grow, which would be really, really advantageous in this situation, there is a disadvantage, though, that there's a couple of disadvantages. You can't RPI link it because you're doing decreasing life insurance, whereas the family can benefit, you can RPI link, you can do increasing, so its value over time will obviously grow, and there's also the risk that the person receives the money and just has an absolute field day and has spends it all on xyz, makes some poor choices, and the money actually disappears. So, that would be something that would be a huge risk, but I would say is, and it's very important to try and do this. Is obviously, if you're a financial advisor, you would obviously just give them lots of guidance on what not to do. And if you're someone who isn't a financial advisor, then if they do get that kind of a payout, then just make sure that you know you advocate that they do speak to a financial advisor to really give them some support. It could also, as well, limit access to some state benefits if they were to get that lump sum of money, and there's even things like, you know, with children going to university, once you have a certain amount of income, or things like that, that obviously it can limit the kind of support they can get financially, and in terms of student loans, things like that.

Kathryn Knowles 7:52

So, so just obviously be very mindful, it isn't obviously, even though it's cheaper, and there is those advantages that we could put it aside, let it grow. There is also those cons to it as well, but the other thing as well, just to bear in mind, is that with family income benefits, the insurer tends to sort of set underwriting limits more around 60 to 75% of the summer showed, rather than the full amount, whereas decreasing after a full amount, so if we say in a sense looked at a million pounds again, just to help me with my math, so million pounds, if it was decreasing life insurance policy, you would be looking at the underwriting limits being set to a million pounds, so for obviously quite a lot of people would be starting to get towards the territory of maybe needing a medical or a GP report, just a standard for that amount of insurance due to their age or the, and the amount of insurance that they're wanting to take out. Now, a family can benefit in that situation. The insurer be looking more towards assessing somewhere between, sorry, looking at 670 150,000 so that might keep it under those limits in terms of a GP report or medical being triggered, so there's pros and cons to both options, so it's, but it's just worthwhile knowing that that is a potential option that you could look at, and it's just a slightly different way of thinking of things, and obviously, as well, if the budget is quite tight, then that might just allow the client to consider something like that more. So, let's have a look at an example, or two examples, actually. And because these examples show how it can be different depending upon the amount of insurance it's going for, so looking at a 34 year old non smoker, and let's say they want 15,000 pounds a year from income benefit over 21 years, so that would be eight pound and 22 pence per month. Now, a decreasing life insurance of 315,000 over 21 years, because we've took the 15 and times it by 21 at a 0% decrease rate, would be eight pound and five pence per month. It's not. Not a huge saving on this, but to be honest, I've been doing examples for all of these to try and make sure that I could get some really up to date figures for everybody, and I couldn't keep going through the numbers anymore. So that's just to show that in this instance, you know, you can potentially save money that way. And then there is that the decreasing life in this one is cheaper, you've got the potentially potential to invest the money, do good stuff with it, but then also it's not that much difference to pay for the fib, and then at least you know you've got that consistent income over time, which can be a really nice security for a lot of people. So, good, good words for good reasons for both of them. Hopefully, that all makes sense. Now we're going to look at what's known as splitting. Well, I'm calling it splitting policies. I don't know if everyone else would, but it's what I'm saying. So, on this one, I'm looking at the underwriting turnaround times. You know, they are getting better, but we all know, and insurers have absolutely been holding their hands up and saying we are taking a long time to underwrite. Now, one of the biggest reasons for that is obviously things like GP reports. Now, especially, we're getting things like IGPRs and electronic records, and things which are absolutely brilliant in some ways, because they often come back far more quickly than ones where the docs has to manually fill it in, which is great.

Kathryn Knowles 11:24

The problem is, is that a lot of the time the underwriters are now having to go through hundreds of pages, so whereas they used to, it used to take a while to get it to them, but they maybe have five pages to look through, they're now getting it maybe within a week, but there's so, so much data now, insurers are using and starting to integrate as quickly as possible in general some levels of AI that goes through the report, strips out the main things that are needed, and then an underwriter obviously looks at what that information is, but it is taking time to go through that, make sure that the insurers, the reinsurers are happy with how the data is being summarized, that the AI is getting it right, and you know, obviously, while they're testing that, there still needs to be an underwriter, in a sense, doing everything that exactly the computer is doing, but double checking and backing up what the AI is doing, but it is getting there, and we have seen some big reductions in turnaround times with the insurers, and, but it can obviously, it can take weeks, it can take months, and, and that's not obviously great, and sometimes, you know, especially, you know, I've certainly seen it, I think I might have spoken about this before on the podcast, but you know, we've had it a few times where a GP surgery has come back to the insurer and said, you know, because they have like a set price that they're prepared to pay towards GP reports to the insurers, and you know, doctor surgeries are usually, you know, fine about that. It's a nice price that they get paid to do it, and but there are some GP surgeries that will turn and say, well, at that price we're telling you now, we're going to wait six months before we even look at this, and that has just absolutely floored me when we've seen that. And then they'll say, and if you want it in three months, it's this price more within two, and the price goes up so high, and it's to be honest, it is ridiculous. And if there's no, you can kind of see why the insurers in that situation go, no, you know, because if they're not going to pay that extra, because they don't know in terms of what kind of return they'll get, things like that, and actually the the amount of money that goes into paying for GP reports that then don't actually turn into business, and that is even from insurers offering terms, potentially sometimes even standard terms, and people still not going ahead, is actually quite phenomenal. So you can see why they didn't want to just be paying even extra, but even if we don't have all of that, in a sense, GPS and medicals, even if it goes exactly as we want standard terms, everything comes through quite quickly, it's still, it's still time, and it's still things you know. Not everybody wants to wait. A lot of people are super, super busy, and they want this done here and now. So, what you could potentially do is split the amount of insurance that you're wanting across multiple insurers. You know, obviously, the advantage with that is if we're not triggering GP reports and medicals. I'm assuming here there's no risks that would cause those things, so let's just say we're quite standard straight through applications. Then what you're doing is you're able to start the policy straight away, and there's some real advantages to that. The advantage is obviously that the client is getting covered straight away, which is perfect. That is exactly what we want to happen. It's been to be insured as soon as possible. The disadvantage is that obviously, if you're splitting it across different insurers, it's quite likely that the overall monthly premium is going to be slightly more expensive than if they were to just do it all with one insurer, it's not usually too big a too big a difference, but.

Kathryn Knowles 14:59

But you know it is something that you would need to put forward and say look we can do it this way, where we go with one and it's going to cost this much, or we can go across a couple and we can start straight away not cost this much, but there is other things that we could look at as well, so another thing is that let's say that you know the client does really need a higher amount that is going to trigger GPRS and medicals. What you could do is put a policy in place that keeps it within the underwriting limits, so there's no GPR, there's no medical, and the policy starts straight away. And then what you could then do is apply for the full amount of insurance with the intention to replace the original one, or potentially even just do a top up, in a sense, to the amount that you want with the second policy. There is quite a big advantage with this. Now, this is on the assumption that I'm very, very clear here. I want to be super, super clear, I'm making this assumption on the client having no risks, they have no knowledge of any risk and no reasonable knowledge at all that there would be any risk that they would need to declare to the insurer, so we're going to use this example of saying, right, so they have put, let's say, 500,000 forward to the insurer, it was within the limits, and we've actually then applied for, say, 600,000 which was in the realm of triggering GPRS and medicals. Now we've gone for this for the 600,000 and the medical has come back, GPR is fine, but the medical has come back and said that there's actually something in the urine, maybe, or the blood pressure is a bit high, which would actually mean that the insurer would postpone that 600,000 pound policy, now very clear that the person didn't have any knowledge about this, they've not needed to go for blood pressure check ever before, they've had no symptoms, which often does happen with blood pressure, and they've had nothing wrong with, they've had no discomfort, you know, about in terms of the thing with the urine or anything like that. So, based upon the rules, that 500,000 pound policy is fine, and it's in place. They had no knowledge that meant they shouldn't have taken out that policy. Now there's been a medical, they are aware, so the new policy would be postponed, but they have that 500,000 pound in place, and it's safe, it's secure. That can be a really, really positive way of doing things. I say, you might want to do it where you do that, where you put within the limits, and then you apply for the full amount, or it might be that you say just do like a top up for the extra amount. The top up would mean that you would need to, it would be slightly more expensive, because you'd be doing the two policies, but it's certainly worth considering. So, let's look at some examples. Okay, of how that would work. So, I'm going to do this time a 44 year old non smoker. They're taking out, well, they need level 1000 level life insurance of 600,000 over 24 years, and this is going to trigger the medical, the 500,000 doesn't, so we put in place 500,000 pounds of life insurance, and it's at 44 pounds and 80 pence per month. So let's just give an example. Option one, we then apply for the 600,000 we get it, and it's just one policy that's 51 pounds and 94 pence. Now option two, we can keep the 500,000 top up with an extra 100,000 that would take the total to around 56 pound 31 so it is about five pound per month, dearer to do it with a top up than to just do a brand new one, so again, you would just need to look, because I'm giving these as examples, but it changes so much with each client, and some assures, just keep an eye on it.

Kathryn Knowles 19:02

The other thing, as well, that can be useful with doing it this way, is that let's say there isn't a postpone, but let's say there's a rating, you might say apply for the 500,000 apply for the 600,000 but there's maybe a plus 50 plus 50% put on the premium of the 600,000 Well, then what you do is you keep the 500,000 in place, and then reduce that app that you've done for 600,000 to a summer short of 100,000 that so you're making what you need, but you're only going to have the plus 50 on the premium for that 100,000 rather than going ahead with a 600,000 that has a plus 50 on all of it. That's a really, really good outcome for the clients, and you do also, as well, have things like with this Royal London, do have their underwrite later system that you can potentially look at as well. I won't go into that in this podcast, but do feel free, obviously, to have a look at that and what they're able to offer. You can have a good Google on that, which can again work really, really well in some. Situations, I'm going to go now onto multiple critical illness policies here. So, there is argument to potentially do critical illness policies with multiple insurers. Now, it is nice to have it all with one insurer, so that it's just nice and straightforward, but each insurer does have their own perks and advantages, you know, you might want to look in, because obviously compliance, I always want us to look at the cheapest, so you might want to look at the cheapest, so let's say Scottish Widows, they're often one of the ones that is usually at the lower end on the pricing, but then you think, hang on, they don't have private medical insurance. It isn't private medical insurance, but that value added benefit with maybe Aviva, the global treatment, or Zoic accelerate option. They both those add-ons, the value added benefits, both give access to enhanced medical treatments outside the UK. If a policyholder is sort of like diagnosed with something, or obviously, if a child's covered, if they're diagnosed with something that fits within the criteria, they'll, they'll get taken to another country if the best treatments outside the UK, and it's them and a loved one, they're completely looked after, it's paid for, they're brought back to the UK, the Zurich one does specific, like genetic sequencing of the cancer, so it allows better targeted treatment, which is fantastic. So you might want to look at that. So maybe you know it might be that you do the majority of the policy with someone who's cheaper, but then do a smaller policy with someone else to access those value added benefits with the very, very, very, very, very clear statements that the value added benefits are not contractual and they could be removed at any point, so that is a potential risk that you sort of like set part of it up with a slightly more expensive insurer to access evaluated benefit that in the future maybe goes, so really, really keep an eye on that and keep an eye on your wording too, and but in terms of different insurers, obviously you have things like society like Guardian or Vitality Life, they have a very specific heart attack definition, which is enhanced compared to the rest of the market, so a lot of the time got a goal, a little bit underwriting here, and claims-ish, and so with heart attack, it is often to do with the amount of what's known as troponin in your blood levels to show that you have had a heart attack.

Kathryn Knowles 22:19

Now, with a lot of insurers, it says, you know, heart attack of a specified severity, which means your troponin must have reached a certain level, and we don't know what that level is, you know, it is something that we don't get told that, and so you don't know what this insurer over here might set theirs at this number, but this one over here sets it lower, or maybe even higher, so it's really hard to know, guardian vitality, just say if you've been told you have a heart attack with pain, which is absolutely brilliant, especially since heart attack is one of the key areas of a claim, so you've got that as a potential advantage to consider. You then have things that, obviously, vitality life again, instead of critical illness, is severity based, a serious illness cover, and it is a situation, obviously, with theirs as well. You can do the multiplier, which means that you can potentially, for a bit more, almost triple or double the amount of claims, sorry, value of the policy. It's very.. I was gonna say it's very, very complicated. I just mean critical illness versus serious illness cover. It's all very, very complicated, but just that you know there are different things, but a really key thing here as well is that you could then have multiple children's critical illness benefit, which is obviously really, really positive, and so children's critical illness cover is usually around 25% of the summer showed maximum, and to like a maximum of 25,000 pounds, and whichever is the hang on, which I'm going to say low or higher, which one, whichever one you hit first, basically as to which one it is, so like if you had a 25,000 pound policy as an adult that it would be 25% of that, you wouldn't then get a 25,000 kind of thing, or if it was say 200,000 200,000 pound policy, you wouldn't get 25% you'd get a max 25k That's probably the best way for me to say it. So, let's have a look here at this. So, an example: 37 year old non smoker, 250,000 life and critical illness cover over 14 years. As an example, I'm going to say kick and sick is intertwined here, by the way, and we're doing that over 14 years to kids of an age of independence. So, if we do it all with one insurer, it is 66 pound 34 pence per month on the cheapest on the market. But let's look at multiple policies. Okay, so we've got 125,002 policies. The total for that is 79 pounds and 58 pence per month, so we are jumping there about 13 pounds per month, but we now have an extra 25,000 children's critical illness cover. We have access to different conditions, different definitions, different severities, which is important. We've got potential access to those add on value added benefits, which could be asked absolutely. Normal for families, they can't afford private medical insurance. These value-added benefits are not private medical insurance. We say the global treatment with Aviva, the accelerate with Eurek, but they are giving them access to enhanced medical support, which in a much more budget-friendly option than setting up a policy, and then also setting up a separate private medical insurance. Ideal world, they would obviously have private medical insurance as well. Again, hope that makes sense now. Joint life, second death versus single life. I am sure I've gone through this before, but let's have a look again. So, joint knife, second death, it's usually for inheritance tax planning. It is where we are putting in place a summer shorts to cover the 40% inheritance tax, potentially for a, obviously, for a family, and it will pay out once both policyholders have passed. Now, what can happen, which is brilliant, is that let's say we have two people for the joint knife second death, but one of them's a decline or a postpone, which means they're not going to get to cover right now, because it is joint knife second death, and please forgive me for being so blunt about this, but I've only got a certain amount of time to keep your attention and keep you entertained, so I need to be quite direct, if that person, one of them, is postponed or potential decline, the insurer is going to assume, in a sense, that they're going to pass away first.

Kathryn Knowles 26:31

There's something there that means that they're not going to insure them, because they think the risk is too high. This person making a claim, in a sense, and that's why they would be sat in that criteria and so they look at it, then if the other person is a standard life, so that means that there's no risk ratings. What they can potentially do is cover the decline life under what is known as a notional decline, which basically means well, this policy pays out once the second person passes, we're not prepared to insure this person individually, but we're happy to have them named on this policy, because we, in the broad scheme of things, we assume that they will be the first one to go, so actually it makes no difference to us if they are on the policy, but then the insurer does something different, so it does mean yes, this person can be insured, and initially you think, "Oh, amazing, and it is, is actually amazing, but then the price of it becomes a single life pricing. Now, there is a lot of technicalities around the background of this, which I don't fully understand, so I just take it as it is, but a joint life second death policy is often massively cheaper than a single life policy. It's usually well, when I've been generally doing it's around a third of a price of a single life policy. So, what we're going to do, so instead of joint life second death, where we're about a third of the price, which it's a joint life second death, but priced on one person, so it's a lot, it's a lot more, so I'll show you that as an example, so then you get the idea of potentially from an advice point of view, so if they're paying for both of them and it is the price of one person, why don't I just set it up for one person? Now again, you might think that, go, because it's a joint knife, second death. What are you on about, Kathryn? Bear with me. The reason being is, is that there's all this assumption somewhere that this, no, this notional decline person is going to pass away first. But what happens if they don't pass away first? There can be so many reasons why somebody wouldn't pass away first, or if that's the case, so let's say we insure the person who is standard just on their own, same price whether or not we do that, or we cover them both now. So let's say the person who has a notional decline lives the longest, and the other person does pass away sooner. Well, then the money pays out, but I hear you say, but Kathryn, the inheritance tax hasn't been triggered. No, it hasn't. The inheritance tax hasn't been triggered yet. So, now the family has an opportunity, because this money has paid out well. We don't know how long the notional decline might live for. It might be another 20 years. So, why not do something with that money? Why not invest it? Why not do something else? Obviously, investments always have risks and things like that. So, obviously, I appreciate again people shouting at me through the podcasting, but you don't think the risks? Yes, I do. The risks, I'm obviously I'm very aware of Andre, and very aware of what I need to say, different things when I'm giving recommendations, and obviously work in conjunction with ifas when we do this kind of thing. So, why not do that with a very, very clear statement to the beneficiaries. If this pays out, the inheritance tax isn't going to be due. You're going to receive this money, you need to keep that somewhere very, very, very, very safe and not do anything with it. There's no. Buying a house, there's no going on a super, super year-round cruise or anything like that. You need to keep it safe. Now that is our recommendation, that is what we're putting forward to them. If they then don't follow that, then in a sense awfully it is kind of their own fault.

Kathryn Knowles 30:15

If they just blitz through that money, well, all they're going to do is cause themselves an issue when the inheritance tax does occur, but we have that good opportunity to potentially make it grow to even help further with any additional growth in the estate and things like that, and the other benefit of this is, is that if we had done it as a joint knife, second death, so the notion of decline is alive. The standard life has now passed. The notional decline is going to have to keep paying the premiums on the joint life second death, so they're going to have to keep paying out and out and out. And we've already established that they're a notional decline, which means they probably have some kind of health condition that is making it difficult for them to get the insurance, so they might not be working, or they might need to be dipping into their funds more to be able to support them, due to the need to for medications or adaptations to the home, or you know, extra trips to hospital, even sometimes things like, you know, specific support in terms of nutrition, or specific types of clothing, there's so, so many different things that can happen, so there's lots and lots of potential benefits. So I'm going to give an example on this. Okay, you do also have to be mindful that if this obviously this would be interest, we are not messing about this is absolute interest, no matter what we do. So if we've done it as a single life and it's paid out early, there can be periodic charges every 10 years on that trust. So you do want to get that money out the trust. You don't want to just leave it sat there. So again, we would want to make sure that financial advisors are involved to give that guidance and what to do. So let's take an example. So we've got two people in their mid 60s, they're non smokers, so one is a notional decline, the guaranteed premium for 450,000 pounds of joint life, second death is 900 pound per month. It's the exact same price if both of them are covered, or whether or not we do a single policy. Obviously, there are reviewable premiums that are cheaper. That's not something that I generally, I would generally try and go for guaranteed rather than reviewable. I did have one, though, recently where I was just like, the reviewable absolutely is mixed, no, it's a no-brainer to use a reviewable here, but what I would say, in case you're not too familiar in this space, is that if you do do something like reviewable premium, I speak to a lot of people who've done reviewable premiums, and then they've reached the ages of 70s or their 80s, the premiums have gone up so, so much that they're actually having to cancel the policies, and so the entire reason that it's been set up to cover the IHT is then completely lost, because they just cannot afford to keep paying the premiums as they stand, and sometimes some people just are not prepared to pay the premiums. That's also the case as well. So, if you do do reviewable premiums again, if you are working in this space and you're not a financial advisor, strongly suggest that a financial advisor becomes involved, so that they can start taking and putting in place financial planning strategies to start to bring down the IHT amount that risk, so that hopefully as the reviews come in place, either the summer show can be reduced or potentially even the policy be canceled, because there's been enough work done to avoid that.

Kathryn Knowles 33:35

You know, we do have it where some people put these things in place on a reviewable basis, and then they start, you know, really strategically doing some gift planning, and the intention is that then by the 10 years, when the reviews start to come in, they may not even need the policy, because the gifts have already started to go outside of those limits, that seven year limit that is associated with them, so it is just another thing to consider, so brilliant users, notional declines do mean that we can ensure both people, but we might still want to even look at doing as a single life, just because that price is exactly the same again, as long as you're doing your advantages, your disadvantages, making it clear to the clients, you can then help them to make that informed decision. So, I've got a couple more now. I didn't realize how much I'd actually have to natter, to be honest. So I do apologize. I'm wondering if I'm rambling a bit, because I'm certainly talking quite a bit. So then the next one is the life of another to cover UK non-residents. So that is one where I think a lot of people just go, "Oh, and definitely not, we need to go international. We don't do international, we're gonna have to get some more specialist in, obviously, if it does need international cover, you can speak to somebody like ourselves at Cura, that is something that we will work on, but you might be able to do life of another as well. So, usually that means that there is some kind of liability in the UK, generally a spouse, maybe children, sometimes we can maybe. Fern, do it where, as say, there is maybe a potential need to, if you're one of the key people who is giving financial support to an elderly relative, maybe with care home fees, things like that. We just, we need to prove why, why there is that need here in the UK, and so I've not given examples of pricing on this, because the pricing wouldn't be any different if this is available. Okay, and if you don't need to go international, but a few companies can do it where they will do an insurance in the life of another basis, so that you know there is a person here in the UK, and they're going to, they have a need to insure a person who is currently not resident in the UK for some kind of risk here, so this will be a nice quick one for me to go through. So let's say, as an example, and this is something that we've done in a sense relatively recently, say relatively recently. So there's somebody where the husband was working and living in Saudi Arabia, and the wife and son were based in the UK. A mortgage was being set upon a property, and you know there was going to be seen that the property in the UK, in a sense, was the main residence for the family. Yes, he wasn't living here, but the wife and son were, and they really needed, he was the main breadwinner, bringing the most of the money to the family, and they really needed to be able to cover that, so what happened is that we arranged for the wife to take out a policy on the life of another basis. It can also be done by UK companies. Sometimes UK insurers can do it for a company if there is an employee that lives outside of the UK, who is a UK citizen, but non-UK resident. You do need to just be careful in terms of contracts of employment for that ineligibility. So, just be really careful, and just in general, going back to that personal side, it's not generally used, can be used for IHT purposes, but for mortgage cover, where there is obviously a very, very clear need. It can be done if there is more of an IHT need.

Kathryn Knowles 37:07

Then again, it might just be going more to like an international side of things, but each case is completely individual, and at the moment there has been, especially if you go internationally, there's been quite a reduction in what's available at the moment internationally, just because there's been quite a few things going on in different areas around the world, so there is, there is some hesitation with some areas at the moment, but, but it is still an option. Now, this next one, I think, is really interesting. I hope you find interesting too, layering income protection policies, there are some big advantages. There's also some disadvantages, and I'm sure compliance people, again, will be shuddering and being going, "Why, why are you saying this, Kathryn? The amount of wording that's going to need to be needed on this is phenomenal. Well, it can be a really good option for the client, so let's just make sure that we're being open about what's available, because this can make a big, big difference between a client taking out a policy or not taking out a policy, so bear with me again. Income protection, why not do a budget income protection policy that has a max claim of one year, two years, five years, and then set up a second income protection policy, which has a deferred period matching the claim length of the first one, and have that being the full term one. So it's often quite a bit cheaper to do it this way. Sometimes you can potentially also even access extra things, like, you know, some insurers do have some additional child benefits that come with their income protection policies. I've just had a little birdie from another insurer tell me that that's going to be coming out soon with theirs as well. And, as I say, it could make a massive, massive difference. We know that a 52 week deferred period, let's say, if we do the one year example, a 52 week deferred period is absolutely going to be a lot cheaper than going four weeks, so we do the budget IP on like a four week, and then have a 52 week one come in. Now, again, I hear some compliance people saying, oh, but then if there's a four week, then this is going to cross over, so the 52 week can't actually start for another month after that. So, actually, you're giving the client an extra month's worth of cover when they can't access. Let's just all be grown ups and sensibles here, sensibles sensible here, and just say, well, we would be very clear to the client about that, and say, look, by the time that this one kicks in here, when this one ends, then actually you are going a month over, however, this is the overall price saving, would you like to do that, and see what the client says, it's a good recommendation, there are disadvantages, though. So, I need to be clear on this. So, as I say, you would do this with maybe a one year, two year, or five year claim, because we can do deferred periods to match all of those with a long term claim policy. There is a potential disadvantage, and this is really quite a disadvantage. Okay. So we're not just going to run to this as an option, but it is just worth knowing. So let's say somebody does exactly what I've just said, like I said, let's say they've done a two year claim period, and on a budget one, and then we've got a deferred period kicking in at two years on a second long term policy. So let's say they claim on that two year period, and they're off work for a year, and they go back to work, but then a couple of months later they have to go back off work again, or reduced hours. The insurer might consider that claim to be connected, so it's not restarting a new two year claim period, it's going to continue it, so actually they're not going to get another two years worth, but the insurer that we've done the two year deferred period with to end of, you know, end of claim in terms of that long term claim, they won't start considering that claim.

Kathryn Knowles 41:02

until sort of like they'll consider it from that kind of that second that continued claim start date on that first policy, so actually you know they'll consider maybe that 1415 months after they've been unable to work, as you know, they've had to take that time off again from work, so that will be their starting point for their two year deferred period countdown. So the client might actually end up with some time where they are, they don't have any income coming in, and that is obviously a very, very big disadvantage. There is a lot of wording you would need to be very clear and transparent about if you recommended that for clients, but let's have a look at what this can potentially mean price wise, as I say, so take an example of a 32 year old non smoke, we've got very straightforward job here, there's no risks, so income protection of 2750 pound per month to age 68 we're going to do a full claim from a four week deferred period. The price of that is 57 pounds and 13 pence per month. Now, what we're going to do instead is do a one year budget, which is, sorry, a claim year, sorry, budget IP with a claim of one year, and that costs eight pounds 62 pence per month to then top it up with a 52 week deferred that has a full term claim, and that's 24 pounds 17 pence per month, so overall 32 pounds 79 pence per month, so we're saving about 25 pounds per month by doing it as a budget IP followed by a full term IP, now with that one year claim period, as well. We are starting to make it not as intense if there was a connected claim, hopefully, depending on the timings, you know. Obviously, it certainly wouldn't be as intense as if there was maybe a five year waiting period, things like that, but it is just still there, so pros are that it is quite a lot cheaper, it's almost half the price to do it that way, which does mean it could make it affordable to some people, as the long-term claim might just mean that they walk away and don't put the IP in place, but we do just have to be super clear about those connected claims, potentially. Now, for the last one, I'm going to go through. Okay, so gift inter vivos. I know I've definitely done this one before, but it's definitely worth going through. So, LV are the only insurer in the UK market at the moment that offer the true gift inter vivos policies. There are specific benefits of doing a true gift inter vivos, and so they are a good one to look at, but the underwriting might not work out with LV, you know, sometimes they aren't able to insure people when other insurers are. You can also find, as well, that it can sometimes be quite a bit more expensive than looking at other options, and again, we would just need to be clear to the clients, the advantage of this one is because it does this, this, this, and this, but the advantage of this one over there is it does this, this, and this, and also obviously the disadvantages. So we have a couple of options, we have been the situation of gifts, we could do gift inter vivos, we could do a level term policy, and then just manually reduce it at set times over the seven years. All we could do what some insurers call a gift inter vivos solution, and just to be clear, if they call it a gift inter vivos solution, it's, and they're not LV, they're not doing a gift inter vivos, they're just doing what I'm saying now, but making it sound prettier is you take the 40% tax that would be on the gift divided by five, so you get 20% times five times, and then you arrange policies for 3456, and seven years, so that it roughly correlates with that taper, so.

Kathryn Knowles 44:59

It correlates with the taper over the term, but obviously the summer show, depending on what happens if there's any changes to the gift taxing rules, it should mirror what the insurance, what the HMRC, and everybody would want, but we just need to be clear on that, but then I say sometimes it can be cheaper just to do a level term life policy, and whilst the it doesn't have the protect some of the additional protections that come with the gift inter vivos policy, which is to do with, you know, if there are certain changes to the gift tax rules, the LV policy will kind of automatically adapt to those and give extra support, there are still some, some good options, so it can potentially be cheaper, not always, but can be, and you can then also you can reduce the summer short as you go along at the three year, four year, five years, six years, and now the insurer, in a sense, isn't they're not going to stop you, because ultimately it reduces the risk for them. They'll be quite happy to have less risk. There might be a bit like, oh, seriously, you know, admin work kind of thing, but it does really, really reduce the risk of the insurer, so that, so they will do it. But you can also choose to just keep it at the full amount if you wanted to for seven years, because then, yes, it'll pay off the gift, but then the family has extra to maybe cover funeral costs to maybe just have a bit extra. There's nothing wrong with that. And again, you would just give the choice. So, let's have a look at an example. As always, so 59 year old non smokers. So, a gift inter vivos policy of 5 million over seven years would be around 773 pounds per month, just a little under now. If we did a level term life insurance policy of 5 million over seven years, the premium is around 751 pounds per month. So we're saving 20 pound a month by doing it level rather than tapering over time, and, and you know, as obviously the gift tapers, that's that's potentially quite, quite a good outcome for the client if we don't reduce the summer showed, but then also, as well, if we do reduce the summer showed, a gift into Vos is just going to stay at that price, whereas if we have the level and reduce the summer showed at those time periods, the premium is going to come down, so become more cost effective over time, it's worth considering, and then I also did an option as well to show the five policies where there are five policies at 20% of the tax value with a policy length of three to seven years. Now that one comes across even cheaper in this instance, so that one is around 671 pounds per month. So on that one, let me do a quick math, we saw on that one, we're saving nearly 80 pound a month compared to the level term, and we're saving 100 pound a month compared to the gift inter vivos. So it's certainly worth having a look at those three options. Now, what I would say is, don't make any assumptions, because I look at doing this quite regularly for clients, and it is not consistent, um, I had one, I've not bought as an example, but I had one where the five policies and the gift inter vivos were both more expensive than doing the level term, and then you know, I've had it before where the gift inter vivos was cheaper than doing the others, so it is absolutely hit and miss as to what is going to be easiest to do, but you know, certainly it is something to just be mindful of, that there is more than one solution when we're looking at these things, and it can make quite a bit of difference to the premiums and things like that. So that is it. I hope it's been okay. I hope I've not. I don't know, boggled the minds too much in terms of just throwing out numbers and different things. I'm always really conscious when I write numbers, and you know, so I give all information because I kind of feel like my eyes would glaze over.

Kathryn Knowles 48:51

So, I hope your eyes haven't glazed over too much. And I keep saying each time that Alan's going to be coming back next time to do a medical deep dive, and that is the plan for next time, we thought about doing it this time, but then Alan had this idea about doing thinking outside the box, and I was like, that actually sounds like it'd be really, really helpful for people in terms of how to build recommendations for clients in different ways and look at different solutions. These are just a few examples of different solutions that you can do, and obviously, protection insurance is very, very complex, and you know I hope that this is just shown in a sense exactly what a protection specialist can do in terms of finding those creative ways to overcome some of the obstacles that we can face, so next time the intention is that we are going to be back doing a deep dive on some kind of risk, and as always, if you would like to get a CPD certificate, please visit the website, www.practical-protection.co.uk and you can get one there using the very, very simple form. Thanks to our sponsors, Planner X. Thank you so much, everybody. I will speak to you soon. 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.

Episodes

Kathryn Knowles discusses what makes an insurer stand out in the UK protection insurance market
Episode 3 – THE Best Insurer

July 9, 2026

Kathryn Knowles is discussing underdisclosure in protection insurance
Episode 1 – Underdisclosure

June 11, 2026

Kathryn Knowles is discussing overdisclosure in protection insurance
Episode 12 – Overdisclosure

May 28, 2026

Kathryn Knowles and Alan Knowles, discussing protection insurance underwriting for fatty liver disease
Episode 11 – Fatty Liver Disease

May 14, 2026

Kathryn Knowles is sharing her personal story of having LPAs for her parents, that were invaluable when tragedy struck
Episode 10 – The Value of Lasting Powers of Attorney

April 30, 2026

Kathryn Knowles is talking about the FCA Protection Market Study Interim Report
Episode 9 – FCA Protection Market Study Interim Report

February 19, 2026

Kathryn Knowles is discussing how to support vulnerable clients when advising on protection insurance
Episode 8 – Vulnerable Clients

February 5, 2026

Episode 7 – Weight Loss Drugs

January 22, 2026

Kathryn Knowles and Alan Knowles discussing Neurofibromatosis and Life Insurance
Episode 6 – Neurofibromatosis

December 11, 2025

Kathryn Knowles discussing FCA Protection Paper
Episode 5 – FCA Protection Paper

November 27, 2025