Just weeks into his new position as managing director, Nicola Culley finds Roger Edwards heavily into a planning stage.
Despite increasing points of crossover and shared back office, Edwards said the providers were strongest as two separate voices.
He said: “We will not see the brands merge together at all. While the back office might be merged together, the actual tone of voice and look and feel will be kept different and style of products will always remain separate.”
Edwards added it had never been an intention to merge. Mainly, he explained, because market share would be lost and cited Friends Life as a good example of that happening as Axa, Friends Provident and Bupa were sewn together.
“It is not completely about market share but what we have with Bright Grey and Scottish Provident are two very different brands,” Edwards said.
“They apply to separate parts of the market. Bright Grey is more about a voice to younger people and Scottish Provident has been around for a lot longer and is more of a professional long-standing brand.”
In other areas, there are two ideas on the table to deal with pipeline strategy ahead of gender being removed from pricing on 31 December.
Edwards has gone against the grain of much industry opinion that gender-neutral pricing should not be used to create short-term opportunity. He said advisers had a duty to clients, and it was a simple fact that premiums would be more expensive for many beyond the gender deadline.
Window of opportunity
But how should advisers tackle their client banks to take advantage of the window of opportunity? Edwards said it depended on the firm in question.
He said the smaller one-man bands may not have the resources and would find it very difficult to get the message out to all their clients.
“It is a shame for many smaller advisers who cannot tackle their entire client bank because there is lots of business to be had from this,” Edwards said.
“Bigger adviser firms will probably have the administration support to be able to put things together like short videos or perhaps going on local radio to get the word out.”
The providers’ response to the industry pricing changes has prompted Edwards to note that a robust legal strategy is crucial.
Edwards is well on the record about being “utterly infuriated” about the incoming European gender legislation.
“I do not think it should have been allowed to do this. And I think it is no business of politicians to say what we can and cannot price on,” he said. “This whole thing started when somebody said women were discriminated against with price. That was two years ago and now I have come to terms that we just have to live with it.”
The “somebody” he is referring to is Belgian consumer group Test Achats. In the Test-Achats judgement on 1 March last year, which challenged the Gender Directive, the European Court of Justice ruled that different premiums for men and women equated to sex discrimination.
