More needs to be done to make the public aware of the need for protection. Today, most people believe they will be looked after by the State and the consequences of this complacency can be emotionally and financially devastating.
Two key covers include health insurance and income protection. In the event of a medical disaster, health insurance protects against the risk of incurring medical expenses, while income protection has the power to alleviate any further financial woes.
And of course there’s the ‘must haves’ for any client discussion, the protection of the mortgage and family against death or serious/critical illness. Yet, the benefits of protection are certainly not widely communicated. This means when a broker talks to a client about protection and the reasons for its existence and how it can help, a difficult conversation is made more difficult.
For me, this is largely a marketing failure. The majority of protection publicity is done by charities using money raised by donations for research. The heart charity advert in which a dead father visits his child in class to tell him he won’t be coming home is a particularly poignant example. These adverts are effective, but protection companies are failing to keep up; hard-hitting facts, such as one in every two people will have had cancer at some point by 2020, often go unreported in the media.
Clearly more is needed from the providers on a national scale. Rather than relying on brokers on the ground to convey this message, the public needs to see adverts for protection, underlining the reality of not having cover, next to the array of mortgage adverts..
There are so many products, types of cover, features and services within the market that the public are simply not aware of. Hopefully an increase in the number of insurance adverts may start to erode this naivety and ultimately encourage people to plan for unforeseen tragedies that could leave their loved ones in a vulnerable, unprotected position.
