In addition, during 2018, £77bn of life cover and £19bn of critical illness cover was sourced through iPipeline services.
iPipeline reported a record quarter in Q4 with year-on-year new business growth of 21%, due to more protection business from mortgage brokers.
In addition, during 2018, £77bn of life cover and £19bn of critical illness cover was sourced through iPipeline services.
Ian Teague, UK group managing director at iPipeline, said: “2018 has been a great year and increase in income protection sales through Mortgage Brokers demonstrates that the mortgage advisory market is increasingly looking at protecting customers against the impact of illness as well as death.”
“I believe that the results demonstrate that the services we provide are instrumental in helping our customers to drive better protection conversations with their clients.
“Providing more opportunities to discuss the wider protection options available and to engage their clients in making personal informed choices on the cover arranged is helping clients to better understand their total protection options.
“Our focus for 2019 continues to utilise our experience and expertise in the life and pensions market, to develop propositions and solutions, such as SolutionBuilder, AlphaTrust and SSG Digital.
“Our focus is on making the process of arranging and managing the necessary cover for advisers and their clients as effective as possible and growing volumes further in 2019.”
Traditionally, the greatest volume of income protection new business is received from independent financial advisers, (IFAs), who are often protection specialists.
However, over the second half of the year, the volume of new income protection and new short-term income protection with critical illness business, through iPipeline services from mortgage brokers increased dramatically, clearly overtaking the volume of protection sales received from IFAs.
This is most prevalent when analysing the sales of income protection year-on-year, which have increased by 85% during Q4.
A breakdown shows that half of income protection business was from mortgage brokers, with this channel seeing year-to-year income protection levels increasing by 165%, compared with 68% for IFAs.
In addition, the volume of multi-benefit sales during Q4 has increased by 70%, compared with the same period in 2017. Almost a quarter of protection policies written is for polices with two or more benefits, up from 12% during 2017.
