While there is a desire among protection insurers to tackle preventative health and provide early intervention, Royal London’s main focus has remained on providing financial peace of mind.
This is according to Carrie Johnson, protection director at Royal London, who was participating in a panel debate at Health & Protection’s first Protection Forum, when asked whether protection’s focus should be on prevention and early intervention.
Johnson (pictured centre) and said the mutual’s purpose is “very much” about trying to build financial resilience.
“So we’ve got a stronger focus on the peace of mind aspect,” Johnson continued.
“But some of that is giving people information, letting them know that support service is there, whatever that looks like.”
Johnson added that subjects such as nominated beneficiaries and online trusts had been a key topic of conversation during the day.
“Those are the kinds of things that can help that don’t cost anything,” she added.
“We were actually having a conversation about whether we should be encouraging people to make sure they’ve got their wills sorted.”
Commissions must stack up
And later in the debate, when the subject of adviser commissions came up, Johnson argued they must “stack up” from a premium and value point of view.
“I don’t really care what the number is from a commission point of view,” she said.
“We just need to ensure that works for the advice and that it stacks up from a premium and value point of view so customers get a good deal.
“And that’s the bit we are working with historic numbers and formulae. We just need to park all of that and work out what is the right model instead of just incrementally building of what we’ve got.”
