The health insurance and protection market covered
Santander halts protection sales to re-train staff
Santander has been forced to restrict sales of protection products through its branches due to a staff training issue.
COVER has learned that the exclusive agreement with Aviva that was signed last summer and commenced in June has had to be interrupted for the bank to re-train some staff.
A spokesperson for the bank told COVER: "We haven't pulled the agreement.
"Some of the advisers are having more training before continuing to sell it.
"We still have the agreement in place with Aviva and will continue to sell their products but while we re-train our staff the products won't be available in all of our branches."
At the time of writing Santander had not been able to confirm how many branches or staff members had been impacted.
Aviva said it was aware of the problem but Santander was dealing with it as it only affected the bank's staff.
"They are doing some training with their branch advisers so there's some temporary reduction in sales, but the products are still being sold through other retail channels," an Aviva spokesperson said.
"It's just a case of some sales training.
"We underwrite the products - the sales process they manage and obviously they want to do the best by their customers and are doing some extra training."
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Banks selling life assurance
I was queuing in my local Barclays branch last year and heard the cashier invite the customer she was dealing with to make an appointment to 'see our financial advisor tomorrow to talk about life assurance - and it will only take about 10 minutes...' So, fact finding, providing terms of business, producing quotations and key features, ensuring the client understands everything - wow! and all in ten minutes. Fantastic! And this is what our Hector intends pushing people towards from 2013.
Posted by: Orlando Furioso | Aug 10 2011
Bank staff are FORCED to sell ..
Hello Stanley Great comment ... problem is the Bank Directors see an 'easy' way to making money and a bonus by flogging = forced selling to the punters who footfall into the brances each day. What is worse, the decision by same Directors who have never had client contact and have never sold a policy to anyone in their working lives. It would be nice one day if some such Director actually led from the front and set a good example ..........but dream on !!
Posted by: graham | Aug 09 2011
Why?
Why are bank staff allowed to SELL Protection Products They should stick to banking and allow Professional Advisors to ADVISE clients on the whole of market range of protection products that are suitable for them
Posted by: stanley holmes | Aug 09 2011
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