The whole of life (WoL) market is seeing growth as it emerges from the shadow of earlier decline, writes Thomas Smith
"One challenge to the WOL market going forward is any future changes to IHT and its thresholds - any impact is unlikely to be clear until after the election."
Sales
While previous years have seen a decline, there are clear signs that in some of the market at least, growth in policies sold
has returned.
Grant said: "Based on the reception our product proposition has had and the volumes that it has generated, I'm very bullish about the market. I do think there are strong underlying drivers for growth in the WOL market without innovation but I do believe that innovation will come along as we get more feedback from customers advisers on products and there will be continual improvement and innovation."
Guaranteed products' dominance in the WOL market may seem unassailable; however there is scope for advisers to increase their share of the market.
Wheatcroft added: "The number of sales are a reflection of marketing activity. The potential market for these policies will continue to grow despite sales, as the population ages.
"Those products do meet a need. There have been criticisms of individual policies in the past, normally the concern that you can end up paying more in premiums than you get back in benefits.
"Companies are beginning to come up with ways of trying to address that and there's been an improvement in the quality of some of the products that have been offered. That's what you see typically: policies with premiums that cease at 80 or 85, and the market has reacted quite well to criticism."
Colley said: "You very rarely see people today buying life insurance which doesn't have a family protection banner or a mortgage protection banner that goes for the whole of that individual's life.
"It comes to each individual when giving advice to have that conversation: ‘Do you want to take protection out for the whole of your life?' Unless those conversations start to be had, how are you going to see this market grow, unless you see a growth in those more generalist higher net worth advisers getting more into this market, because it is very small in the scheme of things."
