The UK's largest ICOBS adviser has applauded the FSA's plan requiring advisers to review protection sales methods.
The FSA has written to firms requesting they review their protection sales procedures and provide written confirmation within six months that their rules meet ICOBS requirements.
Tom Baigrie, managing director of protection specialists LifeSearch said in a blog, released shortly after the announcement, that non advised telesales would suffer most.
He said: "If they comply they will end up facing questions that can only be answered by advice and will have to refuse to speak most every time. The result might be to remove CIC sales and by extension those of many other protection products from the non-advised telesales area altogether."
Baigrie added that Critical Illness sales scripts "meant formalising what good advisers do, and ensuring it is done every time."
Urging advisers to embrace higher standards and adapt the advisory process accordingly, he concluded: "In the end the industry has failed to police itself. All of us need to work out how to obey the rules without making the process one that leaves people buying less CIC than they did, and to extend this learning to all protection products."
