Mark Graves, sales director of Sesame Bankhall Group (SBG) has urged mortgage brokers and financial advisers to discuss protection with every customer saying ‘you don't get to choose which customers are getting the value of your knowledge.'
Speaking at Sesame's Protection Workshop in London, Graves told advisers that not mentioning protection to clients was a "dereliction of duty."
He said: "If you say to that client, ‘I will make sure you get all of the advice on your mortgage, protection and general insurance', that's what you commit to do with that client.
"Everybody who does a mortgage should be doing protection. My point is: you don't get to choose which clients are getting the value of your knowledge. That's not part of the deal.
"The deal is, the client comes into see you for a mortgage and they should get the best of you, every single time. I appreciate it's up to the client to decide whether or not to take your advice, but you don't get to choose.
"Sign up for the fact that every client should have a conversation about the value of protection from your firm. It doesn't say ‘I've run out of time in that meeting, I am not going to mention it today.' It's non-negotiable. It's a dereliction of our duty."
He added: "What we [at Sesame] have to do as a business is make it easier for that to happen. We've got to make it easier for multi-benefit sales to be made. We've got to make it easier so that you can sell income protection right off the bat if you think that is the right thing to do.
"That's the challenge that we face and we're going to go through this process together. You will give us feedback to whether we have got this right or whether we need to tweak it."
