Advisers thinking about adding protection advice to their services should think carefully about the insurer they work with and do good quality research around quotes, propositions and terms of business.
This is according to Andrew Wilkinson, director and adviser at Moneysworth who was addressing delegates at Health & Protection’s third annual IPMI Summit.
“You’ve got to think about which of the insurers that you’re going to deal with,” Wilkinson said.
“I would say have a good look at contracts and also do some quotes among the different insurers to see how they compare, because really every single proposition is different in the market.
“It’s not like the UK market where you know we’ve got about 10 critical illness providers and then we can compare the contracts, in this market it’s less choice.
“There’s a provider that does life and income protection (IP) but doesn’t do critical illness cover (CIC) that I’m thinking of that’s particularly targeted at the expat market.
“And then I can think of a couple the other way around, so you need to do a bit of research to find out who those insurers are.”
Wilkinson, who expressed a preference of working with AIG due to their cover of British expats, also recommended forming introducer relationships with other brokers where necessary.
“If you haven’t got that, or are unable to get that, because you’ll need to be regulated in the UK to do it – then you could look at introducing a broker who is and work in partnership with them,” he continued.