Exeter Family Friendly chief executive Andy Chapman remains committed to the virtue of simplicity.
While Chapman does not necessarily see this as a differentiator it is, in his view, an added value.
He said: “You can try and encourage people to go down to the gym, saying if you keep yourself healthy, it will benefit prices everybody pays with Exeter Family Friendly. To be honest, that is one of the bases of mutuality.
“I would rather encourage people, rather than saying if you do not go down to the gym you will lose your cover. I do not think it is possible to really design a product like that. If we did, I do not think anyone would buy it.
“We all know the more you exercise, the healthier you are and the fitter you stay for longer. If we can explain to people and then say an added benefit means we can keep premiums at a lower level, I actually think that is the way forward.”
Another way forward for Chapman is the anticipated influx of advisers into the health and protection sector as a consequence of the Retail Distribution Review (RDR). He is not alone in believing the more people talking about protection insurance to consumers the better.
However, he cautioned: “If we just think RDR is going to create more people advising and that is going to be good without doing anything else, we are fools. We have got to start encouraging those people to sell in the right way, to be educated in income protection, critical illness, term assurance, long-term care even.
“There will be some who will be well-equipped to do it because they have probably been doing a bit of protection insurance along the way anyway. There will be a group on the other end of the scale that will definitely need training.”
Exeter already runs breakfast seminars, throughout the year, and is seeing an increasing numbers of attendees. Numbers are up from around 20 to 60 per seminar.
“IFAs should have been selling more when they were selling investment. Protection advisers should have been selling more as well. Which is why we have had education for intermediaries running for the past three or four years now,” he said.
Of course, Exeter is an adviser-facing company. With what he just said in mind, will that always be the case? Chapman is clear: “We will always distribute our products through advisers, helping the advisers to make the sale as simple as possible for the consumer.”
More advisers, more sales?
So more advisers and more sales are forecast. The society itself has generally grown organically. Although that is hoped to continue, Chapman’s brief includes acquisition.
He said: “There will be an inevitability of some consolidation among the smaller players in the market place and we have positioned Exeter to welcome other people if they want to come. We have put in back-office systems, we have updated our IT system, we have got a full compliance department which is constantly looking at the business.
“So the whole of the infrastructure of Exeter is being built on the premise it will be robust enough to bring other people to us and we would welcome that opportunity in the future.
But does he have anyone in mind and are the funds available? Perhaps obviously, Chapman would not be drawn on a target but claimed funds are set aside.
He said: “We have four strategic aims. One is to grow income protection organically; the second one is to grow private medical insurance organically; the third one is to ensure our costs are maintained; and the fourth one is to seek mergers and acquisitions.”
There should be fun and games in 2013 then.
