Either way it appears as though IP sales will soon outstrip Critical Illness (CI) sales if it continues at the same rate in the coming years, perhaps highlighting the value it brings to clients when relating to the percentage chance of claiming or the ‘risk’ of clients needing financial support. Indeed, Consumer Duty wants to highlight the risks to clients of not taking insurance linked to their mortgage, and the implications therein. The table on the previous page gives an indication how each product sector fared in 2023 according to Gen Re; a good benchmark to use against your own client base. I know from our own MI that Paradigm IP business is significantly up on this time last year. Healthcare Another area of the market experiencing significant ‘bottom up’ demand based on Google search data, and backed up by evidence from our Strategic Partners, is healthcare. Whether it be individuals looking to protect themselves or SME firms looking to add the increasingly valuable healthcare benefit when attracting and retaining staff, we are seeing huge demand for “new to market” schemes. This is a similar trend to that which we saw when we entered into the Group Risk space, which also proved to be an overwhelming success. What we know is that for a while the demand will continue to grow – some key reasons: • NHS struggling to meet demand and the heightened awareness of this via the media • NHS Waiting Lists are at an all time high, meaning clients will pay for services “on demand” from their savings – putting extra pressure on the private sector (and potentially having impacts on AUM for wealth firms!) • Private sector being used in some instances to cover NHS patients causing further demand to pull for private hospitals and causing blocks in treatment • Provider Product Development – covering areas the NHS can’t hope to meet in the foreseeable future such as Child Psychological treatment – many can wait months for a first assessment on NHS • Medical advances – meaning treatments are available worldwide which are not necessarily available via the NHS We have established a panel of 5 Providers in this space, namely Bupa, Axa, The Exeter, Vitality Health and National Friendly, all of whom are happy to help those who are new to healthcare to “hand hold” you through the process. Click here to view our dedicated PMI healthcare page. Those three little words… The Consumer Duty It’s definitely not “one and done” A lot of our activity on the Mortgage and Protection side of the business over the past few months has inevitably been around helping firms moving from the implementation phase of Consumer Duty to the reporting phase. Firms must have their first annual report ready for the July 2024 deadline. Recent output from the FCA highlights that through their own research, many small to medium firms are struggling with the implementation. To assist you with this, we have recently launched another in our video series “On Film” to help firms understand what their reporting requirements are and how they may go about pulling them together ready for regulatory scrutiny. Coupled with that we have produced a second Consumer Duty eBook entitled “Life under the Duty” which complements the film, and adds further support to firms wanting to understand their responsibilities and how to make sure they are ready to meet the various deadlines. Finally, we are running an additional session of our extremely popular Essential Skills Workshop that first ran in 05 SPRING PROTECT NEWSLETTER Continued on next page...
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