Developing simple protection products will be 'quite challenging'

The protection industry may have to change the way it works if it is to maximise the potential of the simple products initiative, the project’s leader has said.

She also confirmed simple products will initially focus on a non-advised sales process and that it will hopefully be used as a benchmark for consumers and eventually advisers.

The Steering Group has been charged with developing a suite of new simple products and identifying where they already exist, beginning with the savings and protection markets.

HM Treasury originally began the initiative but it has now passed the baton to a collection of industry and consumer focused bodies forming the group.

Its key aims are to:

• help consumers benchmark and compare other products on the market;

• be understandable and accessible to the mass market;

• not be tailored to meet individual needs, but provide consumers with confidence that a simple product will meet their basic needs and offer them a fair deal;

• be a viable commercial proposition for providers.

Speaking at the launch of the Simple Products Steering Group, Carol Sergeant, the organisation's chair, said designing the protection market's offering would be "quite challenging".

"It will take a very different way of thinking about it," she said.

"It's important but I think it's going to be quite challenging. Less than 10% of the population has income protection (IP) and that is an incredibly low proportion of the population.

"But there's a reason for that - it's not a particularly easy thing to design and build," she added.

Sergeant told also COVER that IFAs were not being deliberately avoided from the project but that it had to start somewhere.

"I'm not excluding the IFA network at all, it's just a question of where do you start," she continued.
"One reason I wanted this to be non-advised was it's a real discipline.

"If it's going to be a non advised product it has to be simple, you can't be messing around.

"That's pretty critical," she added.