Protection advisers have a duty to signpost their customers to other appropriate services to ensure they can build their financial resilience, according to Lloyds Banking Group protection director Rose St Louis.
She emphasised that with protection seen as the keystone of financial planning it was vital advisers understood that position and did all they could to ensure customers were financially secure.
Speaking at the Women in Protection Network conference, St Louis told delegates that while there were always lots of conversations in the market around how wealth and mortgage advisers should signpost to protection, protection advisers need to think about their responsibility to signpost the other way.
She explained that at the age of 22, she had a really good experience with an adviser when she was taking out her first mortgage with her partner.
St Louis (pictured) revealed the adviser made her bring all of her policy documents and applications to meetings and that they made a referral to ensure they completed a will as she and her partner were not married.
“If we truly are doing the best for the customers that sit in the middle, we will actually make sure that once we’ve sorted someone’s protection needs, we do signpost,” St Louis said.
“When we have sorted out or started to sort out our customer’s needs in the protection space – where’s our responsibility to move them on to make sure that they are totally financially secure?
“These are all building blocks within the customer’s ability to create their own wall of financial resilience and we’ve done our part so we need to make sure we pass the baton.”