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      Claims and Underwriting Innovation Forum 2021

      COVER Claims and Underwriting Innovation Forum will investigate the most innovative claims and underwriting practices driving the protection and health insurance market forward. It bears repeating; at the heart of every policy is a human being. As technologies advance and digital capabilities expand, it is crucial that the needs of the customer do not get lost along the way. A personal touch must remain at the centre of every interaction an individual has with an insurance company, either directly or through an intermediary. Hence, this journey is about evolution not revolution.28th April, Digital Conference

      • Date: 28 Apr 2021
      • Virtual Conference, Digital Conference
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      Access to Insurance Webinar: Write it, refer it… don’t ignore it

      Access to insurance has been one of the protection industry’s primary focus points since BIBA introduced the agreement to help make protection insurance more widely available in January last year. While much good work has been done to further the cause, there is still a long way to go before signposting can be considered as a common practise. This webinar, in partnership with Royal London and featuring a cross-section of expert speakers, will examine some of the key elements of protection insurance signposting, including the role of communication between insurers and intermediaries, how industry participants can access the right information to signpost effectively, and the growing recognition of mental health challenges for access to insurance.

      • Date: 05 May 2021
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      The COVER Health Insurance Live event will examine how the health insurance industry is mobilising for change both during the pandemic and beyond: How have health insurers responded the many challenges brought about by the Covid-19 crisis and what’s next for the market? What opportunities are out there for healthcare intermediaries and how can they make the most out of rising private medical insurance (PMI) demand? As part of this fully interactive digital conference experience, we will also be introducing the Recognising Healthcare Innovation Awards, a new set of awards to commemorate the leading players of the health insurance sector.

      • Date: 30 Jun 2021
      • Digital Conference, Digital Conference
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      COVER Recognising Healthcare Innovation Awards 2021

      COVER is pleased to announce the launch of its first ever healthcare awards. The Recognising Healthcare Innovation Awards celebrate the best the health insurance industry has to offer across personal achievements, new propositions and campaigns, and innovative approaches to healthcare during the ongoing pandemic. Presented in conjunction with the inaugural COVER Health Insurance Live event, the six award categories are now open for submissions and will be reviewed by a panel of industry expert judges, with the winners announced during an online ceremony at the end of the conference.

      • Date: 30 Jun 2021
      • Digital Awards, Digital Awards
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  • Individual Protection

Tom Baigrie: We've come a long way, baby

'Time to take responsibility'

Tom Baigrie, CEO, LifeSearch
Tom Baigrie, CEO, LifeSearch
  • Tom Baigrie
  • 14 May 2020
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We should be proud of the protection industry’s pandemic response so far, writes LifeSearch CEO

Those of you not as ancient as your columnist can have no idea just how well the insurers and reinsurers have handled their responses to COVID-19 compared to how they would have done 20 years ago - or even five years ago, come to that!

While several have botched their initial reactions or been held back by legacy tech, or now seem to be introducing tighter underwriting by stealth; overall the level of communications, the focus on claims, the emphasis on the value of additional benefits, and the overall speed of change, is a huge testament to just how far our insurers and reinsurers have come.

Historically, any effort by advisers to urge a focus on comms and customers or suggest courses of action would have been dismissed or countered with waffle about competition law. Now, for the most part, insurers engage, correct less well thought-out positions and make their stances clear with decent comms.

I suspect the holistic financial adviser and wealth manager firms will prove as enduring as ever and perhaps they will learn to write protection again too

The result is we are surviving and can count ourselves very lucky not to be in the travel or leisure business, or any number of others shut down just like that. Of course, a slow mortgage market will not help us, but our time of maximum pain may well be when recession strangles household income for a prolonged period.

Then rising lapses and falling new business could challenge all but the best run larger scale specialist protection advisers. Although, on the other hand, I suspect the holistic financial adviser and wealth manager firms will prove as enduring as ever and perhaps they will learn to write protection again too, now that it's clear good times never last forever.

Retention

We can also expect more customers seeking to re-broke their cover in search of savings. While that is a natural and proper part of any insurance market, our retention team routinely come across the work of salespeople whose core business model is to churn recently bought policies. It's time insurers took responsibility and stopped the intermediaries they bankroll from using often illegally generated propensity marketing leads and then telling a stream of confusing lies to make a sale. The replacing of properly thought-through protection plans with cheap, inadequate covers can cause potentially disastrous customer outcomes, for which, in our half-formed regulatory structure, these rogue traders then bear no responsibility, because they claim to not give advice.

Given tough economic times ahead, those who do cheat customers in that way represent a reputational threat to our whole market and a likely commercial threat to the insurers who still deal with them. So it is high time all insurers looked beyond the apparent financial viability of their distributors and focussed on the consumer outcomes their commissions are driving and the misrepresentations being made in their name. We can only become truly proud of our industry if insurers echo their progress in customer care initiatives with reform of their distribution that stops the worst of it doing active harm to their customers.

Tom Baigrie is CEO of LifeSearch

Further reading

Andrew Wibberley: A month in underwriting
  • Underwriting
  • 30 April 2020
Andy Chapman: We must maintain an open dialogue
  • Individual Protection
  • 05 May 2020
Tom Baigrie: Closed book insurers mean well too
  • Adviser / Broking
  • 15 November 2019
Tom Baigrie: Don't fob people off, refer them
  • Adviser / Broking
  • 10 February 2020
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  • Individual Protection
  • Coronavirus
  • Tom Baigrie
  • lifesearch

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