The true value of advice is often revealed in the most complex and challenging client situations, particularly when health or lifestyle factors make protection harder to secure. In these cases, knowledge, communication, and the ability to manage expectations become critical in delivering the right outcomes.
In this exclusive piece, Nigel Bradshaw, Founder of The Interesting Life Company, explores the realities of supporting clients with more “interesting” circumstances, and how advisers can navigate evolving solutions to better serve those who need protection most.
The value of an adviser can be measured in the confidence they provide clients, the breadth of their knowledge, and their ability to manage difficult cases. And there can be no more difficult cases than protecting clients with “interesting” health or lifestyle issues.
However, the need is clear. Clients generally know if they have a medical condition, a disability or partake in hazardous pursuits. They probably know its effects could limit their earning choices or potential; now and potentially catastrophically in the future. They may already have higher costs for treatments, care or lifestyle adaptations. They may fear what may happen in the future.
Money from protection insurance is not a cure all, but it does provide opportunities for them and their families. Ongoing income, paying for care, making family life as normal as possible.
The insurance is there. Advisers can protect their clients against death, serious illness or inability to work. They can ensure access to private care. They can structure it for lump sums or income. They can create an emotional bond for the client by linking it to a house, children, or protecting income until their pension kicks in.
Yet the process can be hard. Insurers guarantee to pay out large amounts of money for small levels of premiums. They can only do this by declining almost certain claimants and differentiating the cost for the remainder to broadly reflect their relative risks. Some of this they do relatively painlessly, by pricing by age and smoker status, but the rest requires underwriting.
In a few cases underwriting can be simple, but it usually requires abrupt alternatives, such as non-payment periods on Over 50’s plans or restricting claims to accidents only. However normally it requires questions; lots of questions. And it requires GP and other reports; so slow. And interesting clients deserve fairness; case-by-case.
Set expectations or seek certainty? So protecting interesting clients is a difficult journey, which is an opportunity for an adviser to show their value. And that value is in managing clients, accessing the right knowledge and following procedures.
A key driver of the management process is the adviser’s choice of setting reasonable client expectations of price and term going into an application, against seeking certainty in advance.
Many advisers aim for the latter, aiming to apply to the insurer they know will give the best result. Such a goal is understandable given the length and time of the application process. However, it is largely a chimera, as no insurer can commit without knowing what a final application will include, or what GP or other reports will show.
Trying to get certainty in advance has generated a mass of extra systems and work for the adviser. From light touch smoking and evidence requirements from The Exchange, through indications for the most common conditions from iPipeline, to the multi-app UnderwriteMe (which does provide certainty from some insurers for some cases) and then into various pre-underwriting processes and helplines from individual insurers.
Different solutions work for different advisers, though complaints and dissatisfaction remain.
A new alternative. There is a new option for advisers for the pre-application. It can be used to improve existing processes. It can also radically simplify processes for advisers who accept that they can rarely get certainty of terms before application, and what is important is ensuring their clients have the right expectations.
ISLA combines the conversational power of AI, with the trusted gathering of insurer information and expert knowledge. It can respond as a client naturally discloses their interesting histories. It explains the condition for the adviser, with what further information the underwriter needs and an expectation of market terms that would be applied. Further answers the client gives tightens the expectation of what final terms they can expect.
ISLA can also work from what drugs the client has, even if they don’t remember their condition’s name. It can show what health improvements the clients can make to enable terms to be improved in future. It has BMI and medical information requirements by the insurer.
ISLA can draft client communications with an expectation of terms they should achieve, and what other information they could provide to help the process. It can even explain the final decision.
ISLA is trusted AI which works with advisers to get more interesting lives insured. Advisers can try it for free at: https://interestinglife.co.uk/isla/.
