Protection advisers in buoyant mood

By Nia Williams

08 Feb 2010

The most significant change is in advisers' views of the opportunities to talk to people about protection, which has become much more positive. In addition, IFAs continue to grow in confidence about current sales.

The index tracks three key elements - current/ future sales, current/ future opportunities to discuss protection with potential clients, and current/ future ease (or difficulty) of converting those opportunities to sales.

The key findings from the fifth report are:

Current protection sales index up 16 points to 129; Future sales index up six points to 135. (This shows how IFAs rate their current/ forecasted level of protection sales.)
Current opportunities index up 24 points to 126; Future opportunities index up two points to 123. (This shows how IFAs rate their current/ forecasted level of opportunities to talk to people about protection.)
Current conversion index up one point to 111; Future conversion index down one point to 119. (This shows how IFAs rate their current/ forecasted success at converting opportunities into sales.)

Martin Noone, IFA sales director said: "Protection IFAs are far more positive now than they were at the end of last year. Advisers are clearly telling us that their sales have improved, that there are more opportunities to talk to people about protection and that they expect this trend to continue in the near future. There's also been a massive jump in the proportion of clients taking out family protection and business protection, as well as notable increases in level term assurance and income protection. Both family and business protection have become much higher profile in the past 12 months or so as families realise how important it is to protect their lifestyle and businesses realise how quickly they could go under if a key person couldn't perform their role. Advisers have also become more adept at selling these types of protection.

"Advisers that continue to adapt and to learn are the ones that are being successful. It's the advisers that relied on a buoyant housing market to sell mortgage-related protection that are now finding it very tough indeed. We're doing all we can to provide a better service to IFAs, to get their clients on risk more quickly, to continuously improve our products and propositions and to be more flexible to better meet clients' needs."