Protection Guru has announced a new enterprise strategy aimed at driving adoption of value-based protection advice across the financial advice sector.
The aim is to tackle the UK’s growing protection gap and meet evolving Consumer Duty obligations.
The initiative targets three core distribution segments: wealth firms with 10 or more advisers, protection call centres with a minimum of five advisers, and networks comprising between 100 and 1,000 advisers.
Under the strategy, qualifying firms will be granted unlimited access to Protection Guru’s research and comparison platform on the condition that it is used consistently across all term protection cases and made available to every adviser in the firm.
The announcement follows news earlier this week of a 250% increase in research credits for individual advisers using the firm’s Protection Guru Pro platform. The new enterprise offer represents a more ambitious step, with the firm adopting a phased rollout model that enables firms to self-fund adoption through pilots before wider implementation.
“Consumer Duty has made the need to demonstrate value and personalised suitability non-negotiable – and that includes protection”
Commenting on the launch, Ian McKenna, founder and chief executive of Protection Guru, said: “We know from direct conversations with enterprise and wealth firms that many want to do more on protection but lack the tools and infrastructure to do so.
“Consumer Duty has made the need to demonstrate value and personalised suitability non-negotiable – and that includes protection.
“It’s crucial to recognise that the primary objective of our service is to improve consumer outcomes and enhance consumer duty compliance, however, being able to do this while at the same time significantly increasing advisers’ income is an enormous benefit. This is a genuine win for everyone.”
Wealthmax, a Brentford-based wealth management firm, has already adopted the new strategy. Paul McDowell, sales quality consultant at the firm, reported positive early results: “Protection Guru Pro has been an enormous benefit in helping us document how we are improving customer outcomes and demonstrating how we are meeting our Consumer Duty obligation to demonstrate value for money, based on more than just price, when recommending protection.
“We had 13 advisers using the system in our pilot and on average that increased the monthly premium written by those advisers by 9%. One adviser achieved a 39% increase in monthly premiums.
“Obviously when you convert that to increase annual premium equivalent that represents a significant additional income all while helping clients choose products by value over price and improving consumer outcomes.
“The work Protection Guru have done to provide us with specialist Consumer Duty reporting and return on investment tools will not only help us continuously monitor how we are meeting the FCA’s value for money requirement but also prove on an ongoing basis that the software fully pays for itself.”
VALUE NOT PRICE
Protection Guru has enhanced its reporting tools for enterprise firms, allowing them to track and evidence improvements in Consumer Duty compliance. This includes demonstrating how often value, rather than price, is prioritised in completed cases, enabling advisers and firms to document improved client outcomes with greater precision.
McKenna added: “We are currently running a series of pilots where we are demonstrating similar results to those achieved by Wealthmax. If you apply a 9% increase in premiums to a 200% annual premium equivalent this can increase the adviser’s protection income by 20%.
“Indeed, one firm have recently told us they saw a 35% increase in commission income for advisers in our pilot.
“Protection Guru remains the only service that allows advisers to look at quality and price to assess value across the full suite of protection products, covering life insurance, critical illness, income and business protection.
“This makes it the only system that meets the FCA’s Consumer Duty requirement to assess protection based on value in a single service. We believe being able to improve consumer outcomes and grow advisers’ revenue is the best way to help the industry address the advice gap.”
