Technology should be utilised to increase protection sales

Technology should be utilised to help increase the amount of protection brokers sell, a panel of brokers and lenders at FSE London have suggested.

Peter Brodnicki, chief executive of Mortgage Advice Bureau, said that protection isn’t sold enough by brokers and he’s seen brokers getting busier and then selling less protection on product switching

“We’re seeing brokers have got busy and have not sold protection as much as they could on product switching and as they have got busier, they have stopped on the purchase side to a certain degree too becuae the mortgage has taken priority,” he said.

And he added: “It’s a tougher job and that’s why more people are good at selling mortgages than protection. Protection for me is a specialist product and we have to think about how it’s sold in a digitally enabled world.

“The default position is to drop it because it’s not engrained in our culture as much as it should be. It shouldn’t be dropped though because we’d be left with term assurance which is not appropriate for a lot of people.

“I think this is a team effort now and businesses have to work more closely together to ensure that the customer gets the best service. Protection is massive and arguably more important than selling the best mortgage.

“I’m not aware of providers working on anything at the moment but they need to be working on it. If I look at the benefits open banking will bring to us, advisers will have all the information about the customer before they talk to them. It seems pointless if that doesn’t catch up.”

Esther Djikastra, director of strategic partnerships at Lloyds Banking Group, said that it’s important to sell protection with a mortgage.

She said: “This shouldn’t be dropped because we all have a duty of care to make sure those people are protected.

“With all the technological innovation we as lenders need to look at whole housing process instead of just the mortgage process and that includes protecting the customer.”