While remortgages are down on last year, even these are starting to rise month-on-month and there are signs that this number will increase.
Part of this is due to the huge number of fixed and tracker deals due to mature over the next few months. The other big driver is the press attention given to the possibility that interest rates may rise. As we are all so aware, if there is any possibility of interest rates rising or falling, or better still, housing rates doing the same, the press is all over it.
If only the media could get as excited about the enormous protection gap as they are about interest rates it may help brokers go some way towards closing it.
Whether due to apathy, the thought that the state will look after them or just unwillingness in people to think about it, the protection gap is getting larger not smaller, but incredibly this fact rarely makes the national media.
What is it about house prices that makes them so compelling while the implications on a young family of losing the main breadwinner or carer is a subject rarely to be broached? Is it because one is about gain while the other is about loss? It’s certainly not because the national media doesn’t like talking about bad news as the headlines about war and other tragedies will testify to.
The MMR has unfortunately in some cases, actually helped to compound the problem of the protection gap. Even though much more information now needs to be gathered under the mortgage fact find process, it appears that exactly because the mortgage process now takes so long that by the end of it clients are too tired to have the mental capacity, time or appetite to discuss their additional needs, like protection and it is often put off until after completion at which point it is almost a cold sale again.
This lack of a conversation about protection often means that people are missing the vital piece of advice which would enable them to cover the largest debt they will ever have, let alone the essential family protection that is needed.
Toni Smith is sales operations director at First Complete
