Kevin Burnham, the founder member of the Protect Britain Better movement, tells COVER what made him start The Protect Britain Better group for advisers.
It was January 2015 - I was in Edinburgh delivering some adviser sales training and something struck me. I vividly recall feeling that I had to do something tangible to bring protection back to the heart of financial advise where I believe it truly belongs.
I decided then and there to focus on and to motivate more advisers across our industry to do a "proper job" protecting their clients and their families, ahead of the many other areas of advice we provide.
It's not that I don't believe pensions and investments don't have their place. It's just that I feel so strongly that too many advisers I have met prioritise them, in my view, wrongly, ahead of proper protection planning.
What do I mean by a proper protection plan?
Firstly I am a great believer in holistic protection planning -protecting peoples' lifestyles, not just their debt, against the unforeseen and unwelcome intervention of sickness, accidents and death.
These are things none of us want to dwell on yet a proper protection plan cannot be sold or indeed is unlikely to be bought until they are faced up to.
I believe the real heartfelt discomfort felt whilst exploring such morbid subjects is the key reason advisers move away from selling protection.
Talking about death or illness stopping you doing what you take for granted is hard, not only for clients but advisers too.
Unfortunately you can make as much money by avoiding this discomfort and covering other areas.
I think that's why I've noticed so many who could help their clients build these plans, skirting around the subject and even arranging huge debt without even basic life cover, just because they are too busy doing more mortgages.
So why a movement? The Protection Review's Kevin Carr asked me that on a tube ride the other day - his theory being that I (as an avid Jam fan from the 70s) had followed the "Mod" habit of building underground movements. He may have a point.
It was after seeing Intrinsic's Andy Walton sharing a hilarious TED Talk video about starting a movement that I decided to do just that and Protect Britain Better was born.
Initially this has been a LinkedIn group to help any adviser who wants to join share with pride their good practice and ideas. We now number over 300 advisers.
If you too believe protection should be the base of every great financial plan please feel free to join the discussions.
Kev Burnham is protection director at Charles Derby Group
