While demand for private health cover may be stabilising overall, ‘very difficult times' are predicted for individual policies. Nicolas Culley finds innovation and customer service are key in fighting the channel's decline.
Dave Priestley, sales director at PruHealth, said the partnership was more additive than a replacement of waning specialists business.
He said PruHealth was “very optimistic” about the specialist market, but added the PMI market was very difficult at the moment.
Priestley said: “There is still some growth in the specialist market. Individual PMI has been pretty stagnant for some time and we see this as an opportunity to help generational growth.
“While we are seeing growth from sales in the specialist market there is no question however that there is a highly competitive environment and that consumers are under pressure generally.
“We are still seeing new business coming through though. There is still a lot of business out there and people buying through their specialist broker. We do not recognise any picture that sales are shrinking.”
Priestley added that broker share of the individual market was a lot less than of the group segment. He said the group market was showing solid growth and the majority of brokers were not individual but rather on group business.
He explained: “This is because there has been deduction and contraction of individual portfolios. But if brokers do group as well then business can be quite strong. It is all about diversifying to manage risk. We are not seeing a significant increase in the number of specialist brokers.
“However there is a significant increase in the number of non-specialists who are now operating in this area. If anything we are seeing more consolidation in the specialist broker market.”
Priestley said business now was not just about advisers offering individual protection services, but offering other things. And similarly with IFAs branching out into health care protection, he cited the FSA’s retail distribution review as an additional significant driver.
He said: “In the IFA channel and with the non-specialists I have trebled sales in the last three years.”
Perhaps the individual PMI market looks set to be overshadowed by group business, and something only the big boys play with.
