Advisers need to offer a spectrum of services from automated to full holistic financial planning, IFA firm Plan Money has stated.
Speaking at the Protection Review 2012 as one of four speakers on distribution, firm director Peter Chadborn said the days of setting out a rigid stall to clients were gone.
He said: "If IFAs are changing models just because of RDR then they are missing the point. But we do have to change. We have to be flexible and listen to our market.
"We started to look at different processes for different clients. We are big fans of tele-underwriting. We outsource PMI. We use multi-asset solutions for investment clients and streamline processes. It is a case of us saying to the market ‘how do you want to do business with us?'"
He added there was no such thing as a ‘low-value client' rather it was about low value transactions.
First speaker on the topic Tom Baigrie, founder of Lifesearch, said while RDR would have a "good go" at forcing pension and investment-only advisers to offer the full spectrum of advice needs, there would not be a significant impact on protection distribution.
He said of the current market and gender-neutral pricing: "There is a frightening total lack of focus on consumers and what on earth will happen to their journey after the gender-neutral pricing and I-E tax changes?"
"On the deadline day insurers need to price accordingly to amount of risk they have taken on otherwise they will have misled all the customers they have taken on before that date because they could not control the speed of their pipeline."
Baigrie also added that for the advisers,sophisticated systems were needed to filter through and gain value from lead generation dubbing it a "wild-west sort of market".
Third speaker, channel manager of protection and insurance at MoneySupermarket, Emma Walker said lead quality was not the only issue, and aggregator-adviser partnerships were crucial.
Walker defended online aggregate focus on price and challenged the common notion that people did not wake up in the morning and buy protection, given the traffic to the website.
She highlighted that conversion rates were low and needed to be addressed.
Johnny Timpson, protection specialist of Lloyds Bank and Scottish Widows, was also speaking.
