The moment is now

Real Life Cover: why it’s needed and what it is.

New regular premium life insurance sales are at an all-time low: new policies in 2005 were 15% lower than 2004 and 29% lower than 2003. MPPI sales have been faring even worse, with 2005 down 24% on 2004 and 42% down on 2003.

The sums just aren’t adding up. The life protection market is engaged in a dog-fight over price. Providers are finding it almost impossible to make the economics work and advice-based intermediaries are struggling to afford the cost of incorporating advice.

Consumer confidence has been dented by products that did not always reflect the risk profile of its customers. As a result, both mortgage and protection intermediaries are now regulated and the FSA has moved Treating Customers Fairly centre-stage. Be that as it may: the industry is still selling protection products that do not address real needs, and customers are still signing up to products whose scope and limitations they misunderstand.

Our existing product range is facing many other drivers of change, with the OFT review of Payment Protection, the revised ABI Statement of Best Practice for Critical Illness insurance and a ground-swell of support for reinventing income protection.

Couple all this with a consumer debt mountain with total mortgage lending alone now exceeding one trillion pounds, and state benefits reduced to subsistence levels, and it becomes clear that customers desperately need a fresh, consumer-centric product.

The world has changed in the last twenty years. Now, at last, so can we.