Financial advisers have been gradually closing the missed opportunity ‘GI gap’ for the past four years, according to the findings of Paymentshield’s annual Adviser Survey.

For the first time since the annual survey began, less than half of advisers (49%) reported that they sometimes miss opportunities to sell. Paymentshield says this suggests that, for the majority, GI has become a dedicated part of their business operations, and that in turn, more customers are being offered advice on insurance.

This statistic is 12% lower than it was four years ago, with 53% of advisers saying they sometimes miss opportunities to sell GI in 2023; 57% in 2022; 60% in 2021; and 61% in 2020.

Paymentshield’s 2024 Adviser Survey was conducted with 509 advisers in July. It also reveals that almost one in 10 advisers (9%) identified GI as seeing the largest growth in sales in the last 12 months out of all business areas.

Louise Pengelly, proposition director at Paymentshield, said: “Having tracked attitudes and behaviours of advisers over time, it puts us in a unique position of being able to identify trends and changes. We’re definitely seeing a positive upward trend for GI. This is likely down to a combination of push and pull factors. The introduction of the Consumer Duty is perhaps resulting in advisers thinking more about home insurance as part of the services they offer to deliver good outcomes for customers.

“The other thing to consider is technology developments, in particular the recent growth of referral services, which are pulling more advisers in to offering GI and which we expect to become increasingly popular. It’s simply easier for advisers to incorporate GI into their business now, with a wealth of referral options at their disposal and, from a Paymentshield perspective, even more support in this area to come.”

Paymentshield believes its survey reveals overall awareness of the opportunity and advantages of using a referral service is still relatively low, with just over two in five advisers (42%) recognising that referring GI could result in stronger conversion and generate a higher income than selling insurance themselves. Yet, feedback from advisers who have already used Paymentshield’s referral service is actually overwhelmingly positive, it claims.

The GI firm says the results of its survey “certainly seem to support the idea that the Consumer Duty may have contributed to a higher proportion of advisers making GI an engrained habit”. Nine in 10 advisers in the survey stated that they think discussing general insurance is an important part of their Consumer Duty responsibilities.

Other key findings of the 2024 Adviser Survey include:

• Overall, advisers are feeling more positive about the market. There is significantly less concern about how the state of market will impact their ability to write mortgages in next six months, down from approximately two thirds of advisers last year to one third this year.
• Over one third of advisers (35%) stated that GI has become a more important source of income for them in the past 12 months.
• Just over half of advisers (53%) say their clients are more likely to want advice on GI in last 12 months.
• Nine in 10 (90%) say their clients have become more price motivated in the last year.