Legal & General is combining its protection product and commercial teams under the leadership of James Shattock, commercial director retail protection at Legal & General Retail.
The move also sees Mark Jones, who was formerly product director for retail protection at the insurer, appointed as product and proposition director for annuities.
Jones joined Legal & General in April 2018 as product director, having previously worked at SunLife as product director and LV= as head of protection.
In the role he led on major product changes including the launch of the Low Start income protection plan and the Rental Protection suite, the insurer said.
He was also involved in increasing the maximum age at which customers can add the waiver of premium benefit when taking out a policy and helped introduce the range of Wellbeing Support services now offered to protection customers, it added.
Lorna Shah, managing director of Legal & General Retail Retirement, said Jones had been an essential driver of product innovation for the retail business.
“His expertise and industry experience makes him a great asset to our team and will help our customers gain greater access to the benefits annuities can bring,” she added.
Jones said: “Over the years we built two fantastic product teams within protection. We achieved what we set out to do so it’s now time to build on these learnings across retail annuities.
“Both industries offer similar challenges based on misconceptions: people underestimate how much they need protection because they think ‘it’ will never happen to them – and it’s the same story with annuities.
“People don’t expect to live past 80, even though we know this is highly likely. I’m looking forward to working with Lorna and the team to solve this and to deliver the best outcomes for our customers.”
