Protection providers told to man up on retention By Sarah Davidson


Protection providers at June’s Protection review conference were told to “man up” and start tackling client retention as the churn that goes on is “bonkers”. ned cazalet, founder of life


and pensions consultancy cazalet consulting, told del- egates that the lack of growth in the protection market was the fault of providers not designing “sticky” enough products. He said: “Life surrenders have doubled in six years be-


Aviva tells protection industry to beef up the fluff


by Kevin Carr, chief executive Protection Review


Leading figures from aviva’s uK protection business have told the industry to be more fluffy in order to raise consumer interest. Speaking at the annual


Protection review confer- ence held in London aviva uK’s head of protection marketing, Louise colley, said the industry spends too much time focusing on price, product and process – but not enough on promo- tion, highlighting that 95% of financial services advertis-


cause of increasing rebroking of protection policies. the industry has to start thinking about how to reduce it – it’s bonkers. “Someone needs to man


up and actually open up a proper dialogue on this. We need to get real about where our customers are and how we engage with them. “it’s time to focus on


back books and manag- ing that. Providers need to think about how to design products to make them stickier.”


ing spend is on savings and investments, with just 5% on protection. opening the first session


of the conference on mar- keting, advertising and social media, colley compared the lack of progress in the pro- tection industry over the last thirty years to how we listen to music, making the point that while music has evolved from vinyl, to walkman, to iPod – the process of buying life cover remains almost the same as it was in the 1980s. aviva then spoke about


the public reaction to the recent life cover advert and confirmed it is likely to run again this year. in terms of which advertisements consumers most remember seeing on tV, it was ahead of brands such as cadbury’s, argos and Burger King, proving that the emotional impact of the advert clearly had a memorable effect on its audience. the presentation pro-


voked a high level of feed- back both at the conference itself and on social media


cazalet also accused advis-


ers of exacerbating the churn problem by rebroking the same clients onto new poli- cies with different providers rather than seeking out new clients. He added: “it seems the


protection industry is sales and claims focused with nothing in the middle.” He also called on provid-


ers to find a protection solu- tion for non high net worth clients that was “a simplified version”. He said: “What’s the point


site twitter, with one per- sonal finance editor saying: “Super stuff from aviva on the need to make market- ing of protection insurance more dynamic.” Whilst the panel members


including iFa Peter chad- born of Plan money and roger edwards, proposition director for Bright grey and Scottish Provident, were supportive of the advert, there was a word of caution from freelance journalist and twitter expert annie Shaw. on the subject of


whether or not other life offices should follow suit or whether there should be a centralised industry cam-


of selling a few people Bent- leys and rolls royces when everyone else is walking around with holes in their shoes because there’s no bus service.” a spokeswoman from


the Financial ombudsman Service said they received complaints from customers whose policies had lapsed because of a minor change of details such as a new address. She said she thought little


was being done by life offices to retain these clients.


paign to further promote protection to consumers, the warning was not to overdo it. this was on the basis that


such marketing will only dis- turb consumers into action if it is infrequent – if it was on tV ten times a night the public would become im- mune to the impact, which is a fair point. Personally i think the


advert was fantastic for both consumers and the industry. it has given advisers an easy way to bring protection into the conversation, and while i agree with annie’s concerns around overdoing it, i hope to see it on our tV screens again soon.


Aviva’s Louise Colley won the Protection Review personality of the year award mortgage introducer JULY 2011 29


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