Cirencester Friendly

The imminent Welfare Reform Act should serve as a wake-up call to the public. It will be launched on 1 April and will bring major changes to payments for thousands of people and further reinforce that reliance on the State is a fool's paradise.

Cirencester Friendly has called for an industry standard for income protection claims statistics to be provided after publishing its annual claims statistics.

The Defaqto star ratings system has been called into question by industry experts following publication of its 2013 income protection (IP) products ranking.

With sales of individual IP on the slide, industry is agreed something needas to be done. However, as Nicola Culley discovers, opinion is divided as to how to reverse the decline.

The FSA has confirmed that advisers who are not level 4-qualified can still advise on Holloway insurance products.

There appears to be confusion among consumers, some financial advisers and in particular claims chasing companies, when it comes to payment protection insurance (PPI) and income protection (IP).

So we heard from British Friendly recently that income protection (IP) sales are not benefiting from the gender change opportunity. Advisers have reported similar, but that life is tracking the opposite trend.

Educating consumers on the importance of income protection is a job for government and industry-led campaigns, advisers have said.

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has reported a more "entrenched" attitude by both consumers and businesses across the board in health insurance complaints.

Cirencester Friendly has been working on its marketing strategy to focus more prominently on independent advisers in response to RDR.