The awards are designed to recognise firms and individuals who have demonstrated a proven commitment to the retention of their protection business.
Over the last five years L&G has invested in a number of key initiatives to help around 15,000 advisers highlight over £1bn of protection business at risk, helping reduce lapses and increase persistency as a result.
These include an electronic early warning system which gives advisers the tools to recognise very early on when a policy may lapse, expertise and specialist face to face advice and help for firms so that they can learn and benefit from retention best practice.
L&G has also set up a dedicated retention unit formed to focus on the prevention and management of lapses and cancellations and a retention MI tool giving advisers critical sales data to help identify trends and issues.
In 2010 use of the early warning system alone helped over 1,000 firms and saved more than 70,000 policies being terminated.
There are four awards categories that advisers can enter. Best Business Practice, Special Recognition, Most Improved Performance and Best Reinstatement Performance.
Peter Graham, managing director at L&G individual protection, said: “These awards are the first of their kind and I am proud that L&G are leading the way in rewarding retention.
“As an industry we tend to focus on the front end processes for acquiring new business but it is critical that we also focus to manage the persistency of that business.”
Phil Jeynes, head of account development at PruProtect, said that the problem with retention in the protection market has been the continuing fall in product pricing.
He said: “The way the industry is going to end up coping with that is at the point where prices have ceased to drop year on year, particularly for life cover.
“Whilst the products have been getting cheaper, there’s always a logical reason for some brokers to go back to their clients and saying they can get a cheaper price on the same product from last year.
On the awards Jeynes said: “Incentivising brokers not to churn can only be a good thing.”
