There has been a growing noise across the industry about the ability of the aggressive aggregators to pilfer protection business from financial advisers.
And I tend to agree with advisers who are, in the main, adamant that protection must be sold and not bought, and bold in their beliefs that this process cannot be fulfilled by a computer.
But the fact of the matter is that the comparison sites - with low cost entry into the market and set-up capability in a matter of weeks - are emerging in force. Plus, consumers are undeniably switched on, more than ever, to the efficiency of technology.
So how much of a real threat are the aggregators? At the minute we are in a place, in the main, where large volumes of traffic are hitting these sites daily but conversion rates are not matching up.
The theory behind this could be two-pronged; the adviser could be right in that protection will not sell without that extra human push; or the sites, most of which began in car insurance and tagged life cover on to the end, are simply not specialist or sophisticated enough at the moment.
If the latter is true, then maybe we are just at the beginning of aggregator capability. Perhaps in time, systems and consumer awareness development will see more powerful comparison site capability in the protection sector to truly rival the value offered by financial advisers? Or perhaps not?
Life cover specialist comparison site Payingtoomuch.com has already hit the market with sophisticated software, to track the consumer journey from beginning to end and pick them up when they drop off.
While it is successful in its own right, it has still made the decision to partner with IFA firms going forward. What this says is that perhaps a strong and viable protection-selling business model can be adviser plus aggregator, as opposed to adviser versus aggregator.
But having said all this, to labour over the point of whether aggregators have the power to overthrow the adviser could actually be missing the bigger picture. I truly believe the notion that the good quality adviser who does a sterling job will never be pushed out by comparison sites. In this way, isn't the wider RDR-changing world the main driving force to latch on to, rather than the growing comparison site scene in isolation?
For example, Colchester-based IFA firm Plan Money has been one of the first to partner with Payingtoomuch.com. The move has not necessarily been driven by an increasing fear of aggregator capability but rather a belief in there being no such thing as a no-value client.
What Plan Money has done is build a transactional, non-advice arm and white labelled Payingtoomuch.com capability - starting with protection - to sit alongside its full, holistic advice offering. What its director has said is that there is more strength in advisers working with aggregators instead of against them.
But what he says more, is that with RDR, the changing consumer attitude and opportunities in technology, it no longer makes sense for the adviser-cum-businessman to be a one-trick pony. "The client can choose how they want to deal with us and that is what consumers want," he has said.
The premise is that even if the client chooses to go down the automated route, they will still be connecting with the firm's brand which will likely be first in mind come a time when full advice may be needed.
It is a robust, crystal clear proposition that leverages the capability of a perceived competitor. It is thinking outside the box. This could be a stand-out model as more and more adviser cross-party partnerships begin to unfold under the strain of a competitive, fee-based world.
The next three years, as RDR impact truly sets in, will be extremely telling. And when it comes to protection advice, the adviser who embraces the fast-growing online scene could very well be a winner as we see who stays and who goes.
