Long-awaited protection academy set to launch after regulatory delays
By Lucy Quinton
Direct Life & Pension Services is set to launch its protection training academy this month after delays dogged its arrival.
Richard Verdin, sales and marketing director at Direct Life & Pensions, said it had been in the pipeline for the past 12 months but admitted that it had been plagued by regulation delays that set the launch back.
The majority of the training will occur online and Verdin added that all that stands in the way of the launch is the technical side of how it will be delivered to potential users.
He said that, from talking to people, there appeared to be a gap between training provision and what is actually required.
Direct Life and Pensions' LifeQuote brand will implement a training model that focuses on products and providers; insurance, the law and trusts; provider and policy taxation; commission; underwriting; reinsurance; and advising, buying and selling.
It will focus on what insurers want intermediaries to learn and what advisers want to be trained on.
The development of the system has been a two-year process. It will help advisers offer advice more freely on other areas and to ensure they help customers to better understand why some products meet their needs better than others, Verdin said.
The initiative has won approval from key figures in the industry, including as Clive Waller, senior partner of CWC Research, who said that any training initiative was positive and that his real concern was that the Retail Distribution Review pretty well ignored protection.
Direct Life & Pensions is not the first company to invest in an academy.
On the provider side last year, Legal & General launched several academies, albeit targeted specifically at underwriting.
Alan Lakey, principal of Highclere Financial Services, said he believed Direct Life & Pensions' launch of a training academy was "certainly a good idea".
It would take the education of advice forward and as Lakey added: "Most advisers, myself included, learned the basics from their time working for insurers. There were very few options for learning or researching protection matters, which is why I do all my own research."
n For a more in-depth look at what LifeQuote will offer, turn to page 25-26 for a feature-length look at what the firm is trying to achieve.
