When it comes to product development plans, health and protection providers need to stop repeating past mistakes and look to the future, says Wojciech Dochan.
There is also a need to look at ways of collaboration, over how to fund treatment, and to determine a joined-up role between privately funding when someone is sick for a long time and the role of government through incapacity benefits and NHS treatment.
Providers should seize the moment to build products that work alongside each other and integrate private and state provision.
The changes that are being introduced in the FSA make the shift to a consumer focus more urgent.
Traditionally, products have been designed as separate products for particular groups of people.
The outcome has been plan proliferation. Customers find themselves facing a whole range of standalone products with each one artificially differentiated from the rest.
Meanwhile the providers, when they find that the plan features no longer meet customer needs, move back to the drawing board to design a replacement product.
This is the background to the legacy problems that so many providers now have to face.
These can so severely handicap the development of more flexible and innovative offerings that a company may be left to base its product strategy on price alone.
Consumers are becoming shrewder with greater access to information on hospital waiting lists, medical conditions and surgeon ratings and are therefore better able to make more informed choices about where and how the treatment or support is to be funded.
In the UK, six million people regularly search for medical information using the internet, with self-diagnosis and seeking a second opinion on health matters becoming increasingly common.
This means that consumers are becoming more empowered. Expect the health and protection providers to respond accordingly.
Worksite marketing is likely to grow as employers take on a greater role in providing access to health and protection to support pensions in the workplace.
This, in turn, means that employers will be increasingly looking to their IFAs, employee benefits consultants, or accountants and solicitors for guidance.
The obligations with NEST are being introduced in stages over four years from 2012 to 2016, with largest firms affected first and the smaller firms coming in from 2014.
This means that there will be a steady stream of demand coming through for advisers to target over the next few years, especially from the SME business sector.
A significant opportunity exists for the healthcare and protection market to develop and launch new products to truly manage the integration between private and public provision as the various legislative changes take hold.
The key ingredient in this will be empowerment and inclusion of the consumer in the design of the solutions.
Wojciech Dochan was formerly with Bupa and Unum
