Openwork has revealed that it tripled the number of protection policies recommended to clients during 2015 after building up its adviser capacity.

Openwork advisers wrote 134,000 policies in 2015, covering a total of 160,000 individuals. This represents an uplift of more than 200% on 2014, when Openwork wrote 44,000 policies.

The network considers protection to be a core element of its advice process and divided its distribution business into three specialist business units – protection, wealth and mortgage – last June. At the end of 2014 Openwork announced it was enhancing its protection advice capacity by taking on MetLife UK’s protection advisers, who collectively number more than 750.

The agreement provided Openwork with an expanded nationwide network from which to distribute its broad protection product range, which includes income protection, life insurance, critical illness and accident protection cover.

Mark Duckworth, CEO of Openwork, said: “Protection is the cornerstone of both our business and approach to advice and it is extremely pleasing that we have managed to triple the number of individuals covered in such a short space of time.

“We remain absolutely committed to growing our protection business as part of our efforts to close the UK’s protection gap and we commend our advisers across the whole network for ensuring their clients and families have adequate and appropriate cover.”