Mike Allison Director of Protection Protection Market Update 4 Welcome to the latest edition of the Paradigm Protect Newsletter. I hope you all had a great summer and got to take at least some advantage of the weather. While the sunshine was welcome for most, some became victims of the climate change that is almost certainly now upon us. We have seen moorland fires before during long dry spells, but the scenes in the Midlands, where homes were burnt to the ground, are not what we have been used to. During 2026, many wildfires have occurred across the UK, fuelled by record breaking heatwaves. As of 10th August over 57,720 acres have been burnt, with 72 fires larger than 74 acres being recorded. Several of these fires forced evacuations and damaged property and protected habitats, with many requiring multi-agency responses as fire authorities raised risk levels and issued warnings amid deteriorating conditions. How the financial industry responds to this will undoubtedly affect insurance in the future, along with our responsibilities as advisers and the quality of the products we recommend. The table shows what insurance policies typically pay if you cannot occupy your home due to certain perils, so it is worth checking what the policies you normally recommend provide: I have even heard lenders suggest that the future of lending in certain areas could involve individually risk-rated interest rates. As advisers who select insurance products for clients, this should encourage us to think beyond a tick-box exercise, and it will reward those who take a genuinely advisory approach to general insurance. This points to the broader theme covered by LV in this month's edition: building financial resilience across a client's lifetime, rather than advising on products that address only shorter-term needs. The question is how many of us work through all the individual risks that clients may face as homeowners or renters. It can be a difficult topic to raise, especially when the financial pressures at the first-time buyer stage are already high. The regulator expects us to make clients aware of the risks they face, but those risks are many and varied, and clients will not always want to confront them, rank them by importance or pay to cover them. Helping them build a picture of financial resilience is therefore important. Standard Comprehensive Fixed Monetary Cap £25,000 – £50,000 £75,000 – £100,000 Percentage Based Cap 20% of buildings sum insured 30%+ or uncapped/ extended limits Standard Inclusions Rent/hotel, pet boarding, storage Plus travel, extra food, parking
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