If I had a pound for every article that made a claim to know the secret to growing the protection market, I’d be very rich.
Full transparency, I’ve been the author behind a few and offered the odd hypothesis as to why this perennial underachiever has failed to hit expected heights.
Instead of raking up these arguments, my intention is to focus simply on one factor: a gap in our understanding that needs filling in before true success and growth can ever be achieved.
That gap is adviser insight and understanding – or lack of it.
Protection needs advisers like crops need rain.
Advisers are the market’s demand generation function. They create perceived need. They persuade. They overcome customer challenge. They navigate what can be a frustrating buying process.
However, has the protection market acknowledged the hugely important role they play and dedicated the correct level of research, insight and segmentation to the current adviser population?
We’ve been talking about this very challenge recently and the only answer we can come to is no. Here’s why.
In the past 15 years, the advice market has become polarised.
As regulation enforced different remuneration and qualification models, and in turn different specialisms, a simplistic form of segmentation was born.
Wealth managers, financial planners, IFAs, mortgage and protection advisers – all seemingly simple titles; titles that can be given greater credence than they perhaps deserve.
The assumptions behind these titles are sweeping and sometimes huge.
Many wealth managers and financial planners aren’t interested in protection, they’re primarily concerned with assets under management.
A proportion of mortgage advisers focus more effort into protection (even re-engaging on protection-only conversations) when the housing market struggles.
The hardcore are made up of protection specialists who are solely focused on this need area, and advisers who place protection as the foundation of any financial planning activity.
But is this right and, indeed, is it enough?
Plentiful data
Ours is a market rich in data, but do we deploy this data effectively enough to truly understand and segment our primary customers and partners: advisers?
While it is relatively easy to follow the breadcrumbs to those successful and consistent advisers, will they provide the growth we need? Maybe not.
We need to delve deeper.
To stimulate greater adviser demand we need greater understanding, using the data we must draw more granular adviser segments or cohorts.
Based on their demographics, based on their behaviour and based on the signals they send us, we can predict their protection outcomes.
Within iPipeline, this is the work we have begun to undertake using the wealth of data we hold.
We’re trying to answer key questions such as, how many advisers who seem engaged in protection (actively researching through quote and product comparisons) make recommendations to every client who has a protection need?
