Several industry experts reveal lack of willingness for change in IP market
By Johanna Gornitzki
Some of the leading income protection (IP) providers are stifling product development in the sector, it has emerged.
According to several industry experts, some of the IP market leaders are holding back industry development for fear of losing their market share.
While no one was willing to implicate any specific firms, people in the industry have expressed concerns that leading IP providers do not want to see the cover moving forward and that these firms have a "secret agenda" to keep IP where it is so that they will not lose their place as one of the major firms.
Kevin Carr, head of protection strategy at LifeSearch, said: "There are many within the industry who believe a degree of standardisation and simplification would serve the IP market well. However, some leading providers seem reluctant to make changes."
Agreeing with Carr, Peter Le Beau, co-founder of the IP Task Force, said "an unwillingness to think revolutionary" has led to a lot of disappointments.
"After so many years of disappointing sales, it is easy to detect pessimism in a number of companies about the product. The glass ceiling that many people feel has existed for many years for IP may in reality be a self-imposed glass ceiling. Part of our job at the Task Force is to encourage offices to be more positive in developing new products, converting new advisers to the sale of IP and stretching the boundaries of the product. A lot of the disappointments of the past may be the result of an unwillingness to think revolutionary thoughts about a product that plateaued in sales some time ago," le Beau said.
Taking the same stance, Nick Telfer, principal consultant, protection at Defaqto, said: "There are certain parts of the industry that don't appear to have the motivation to change and are just sitting back to see if anyone else is brave enough to break the mould."
He added: "If providers don't look to review their IP propositions there is a real danger someone else will, and then they will have to play catch up."
Andy Chapman, chief executive of Pioneer, said: "There certainly seems to be a reluctance among the larger players to do anything, with no one having published any declined IP claims statistics for example."
However, Andy Milburn, IFA market manager at Royal Liver, did not think certain providers should be singled out as having a hidden agenda. "If you sat all of the IP providers down to agree on something, it's going to be really tough. They all have their hidden agenda," he said.
