With white papers due this year on long-term care (Dilnot Review), sickness absence and also the Treasury's work on simple products, how much explicit help (not just macro changes to benefits and the NHS) would you want the government to give the industry?
Admittedly the industry has continued to pile complexity onto critical illness so the simple idea is not wrong, the problem is that simple products per se might not solve the problem. Consumers do not want to buy insurance for a whole host of reasons and complexity is only one of them.
With long-term care, one potential solution is an income protection (IP) product sold to young people which ‘converts’ to LTC later on.Unfortunately, the last major round of legislative changes put paid to such innovative ideas – indeed Bright Grey had to withdraw one from the market. As they are not experts, I do not think government should dictate the direction, they should debate. What they should do is ensure that legislation provides the best balance of consumer protection and provider flexibility.
Matt Morris, Lifesearch
The world of financial services is often ambivalent towards government.
On the one hand regulation through the FSA has not been a great friend to the protection adviser and there has been regular criticism from many quarters, yet it is also widely acknowledged that the powers-that-be need to be brought onside if sales are ever to expand enough to start making a dent in the protection gap.
The most important step the government can take is to admit that the welfare state can no longer offer the public anything more that the most minimal of safety nets. And even then the welfare system declines claims more often than they are paid.
Government handouts are enough to prevent a return to a country of Dickensian poverty, but nowhere near a level that will allow people to maintain their lifestyle, pay their debts and ensure they are cared for in their old age. When the public accept this they will be more willing to believe in the need for their own private life and income policies.
There would need to be safety catches in place preventing quick fit online sellers peddling funeral plans and disgusted PPI policies and instead encourage long-term solutions. But it must start with an admission from the political class that the public cannot expect cradle to grave care. Wishful thinking maybe, but the truth is worth striving for.
Kirsty Jagielko, Cigna Healthcare Benefits
Often managers do not recognise that to be work fit you do not have to be 100% well. When dealing with employee absence, the focus is often on treating medical conditions rather than on understanding capability to work. As the working population gets older more employees will be living with a long-term medical condition. We’ve therefore been actively working with our occupational health clients to help them focus more on capability.
So we welcome the findings of the Sickness Absence Review which has put capability at the heart of keeping people in work. The review recognises the important role occupational health services already play by supporting employers to keep employees in work. We would like the government to encourage more employers to engage the services of industry experts.
In that way we can help more employers actively manage long-term sickness absence by understanding an employee’s capability to work, rather than focusing on their medical condition. It is also encouraging to see recommendations for tax relief to be extended to private medical treatment for conditions that are preventing people from returning to work, not just those caused by work.
However, the review has limited this to lower rate tax payers and we would like to see this apply to everyone covered by such a plan, regardless of tax status.
We believe it’s important to encourage equal access for all to benefits that support the fundamental principle that work is good for you.
