CONSUMER DUTY NEWSLETTER
to clients right now. The reason being that if, some time in the future, the need for protection is realised and there is nothing there for the client to claim upon, they might well argue that this was something of a dereliction of duty on the adviser’s side, as they didn’t put in place everything required to meet this potential outcome. We’ve argued for many years that protection should go hand in hand with mortgage advice, but the penetration rates for many advisory firms do not bear this out. Of course, a client can refuse to take up a protection policy – and the firm should always document this when it happens – however they can’t refuse what hasn’t been offered to them, and the Consumer Duty appears to follow a line where advisers/firms must present protection to them rather than ignore it. Furthermore, we have already seen a number of success stories with Paradigm firms who have previously not written protection business, recruiting individuals into their firm to fulfill ‘Protection specialist’ roles. We have supported these firms through this process, including the training and compliance elements, which has allowed these firms to embed a process for handling protection enquiries in a way they could not previously due to workloads. The final point to address here for firms who have not previously embraced protection as they will now need to, is this is a sector with few, if any, barriers to entry. There is a wealth of support available and we can provide extensive assistance to those who may be looking to branch out. As mentioned, there are plenty of opportunities that exist, which mean that you can potentially utilise this change under the Consumer Duty to add valuable income stream to your bottom line. If you’d like to understand how we can work with your business on this, please feel free to drop me an email at protection@ paradigm.co.uk or request a call back from your dedicated Relationship Manager here . 11 CONSUMER DUTY NEWSLETTER
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