Discussing income protection can be uncomfortable, both for clients and advisers. Alan Waddington, Distribution Director at Cirencester Friendly, explores why the protection gap persists and how clients can be engaged in a positive manner. Alan believes that sharing stories of real impact and building confidence in the value of protection, advisers can help more people access the support they need while strengthening their own client relationships.
How do you get people to talk about subjects they’d rather avoid? We Brits are experts at ignoring things that make us feel uncomfortable. We are perfectly prepared to stick our heads in the sand and refuse to discuss things like money, ill health and death, hoping that if we ignore difficult topics, they might just go away.
Unfortunately, income protection is directly linked to subjects we’d like to avoid. It’s very difficult to emphasise the importance of protecting your income if you don’t address the fact the bad things happen in life. Is this why it can be so hard to have the protection conversation?
The FCA’s interim Pure Protection Market Study report highlights just how large the protection gap still is. It states that 58% of people don’t hold a protection product, and 59% of these people have never considered their protection needs. This means they have never even had the protection conversation, let alone thought about the benefits it brings.
So how do we change this? A good start might be to recognise that these barriers exist. Instead of trying to pressure or scare people to think about topics that make them feel uncomfortable, lets think about how we can start the discussion on a positive note that will immediately spark interest and create engagement.
There are so many positive stories connected with protection. When I think about our own claims and the difference we made – helping people recover quicker, ensuring their dreams remain intact, providing additional support – I know what we do deserves to be shouted about and celebrated. It is why I chose to work in this industry and what motivates me to keep improving our proposition.
Just as it is very British to avoid discussing certain topics, it is also very British to be modest about our own achievements. Shouting about our successes is not seen as the “done thing”, its perceived as vulgar or arrogant or off putting. If we want to start closing the protection gap, we need to be more self-confident and stop being scared to tell people what a good job we do and how many people we help.
While it’s true that money itself doesn’t buy happiness or good health, it provides something important – hope. Instead of having to deal with both illness and financial difficulties, those with income protection can see the light at the end of the tunnel. While their condition may change how they live their lives, the support they have means they have choices on how they deal with the hand they’ve been dealt.
Hope is such an important thing. It gives people the strength to get out of bed in the morning, to believe that things will improve, and to see a future. Life is very dark if there is no hope. That is what the protection industry offers, and we need to find a way to give more people this hope, particularly in today’s world when it can feel like we’re surrounded by gloom and doom.
Full case studies are notoriously difficult to secure. I completely understand why someone might be reluctant to discuss their health, their finances and lay themselves open to public comment in the age of social media.
However, there are ways to tell our story without name, rank and number. People are very happy to review a restaurant or a hotel as they can do so with a degree of anonymity. Encouraging more claimants to share their experiences in a safe space so they feel able to talk is vital. It provides the relevance we need to engage people in the conversation. Through stories, people can relate to protection in a way that’s simply not possible through glossy ads or clever straplines alone.
This is an industry that wants to the right thing and improve peoples’ lives. We need to have the confidence in what we’re doing to start shouting about it more and encourage more people to share their stories of hope.
