Zurich is set to offer its protection proposition on its retail platform later in the year, to offer IFAs a complete holistic view of financial plans.
The insurer said it was important to bring protection in line with investments to enable advisers - particularly IFAs - to do more protection business.
Peter Hamilton, head of retail at Zurich, said: "Protection does not need to be on platforms. But the developments in the market suggest that there is a place for it to be there as an option.
"The capability will need to be made as simple as possible for people to buy it through the platform. And it will not take away from the separate protection market necessarily."
He added there would be different ways of approaching the protection-on-platforms developments for different customers and that it was not about putting all protection on all platforms.
He said there were two categories in which platform protection propositions sat; the stand-alone protection policies, bought alongside mortgages for example; and protection linked to investments, which lent itself to sitting on platforms.
David Penny, managing director at IFA Invest Southwest, said: "I can see certain target-driven clients liking the idea of investing funds and being sure that either growth will get them to a certain target with the life insurance covering them in case of early demise.
"But the principle of stand-alone life insurance being available on a platforms is of no interest to me at all. Platforms generally speaking are in the best interests of the adviser over and above the client."
He added if an adviser had good, efficient, up-to-date modern back-office systems, platforms were less attractive especially in the case of stand-alone protection.
Nucleus went live with a pilot on-platform protection offering in December.
And a technology and consultancy firm to the major intermediary platforms reported that the top five market players would show their hand on protection propositions in the second half of the year.
