Carl Heard, National Account Manager at LV=
As the year draws to a close, it's a good time to consider whether you've reviewed your new (or renewed) relationships with your clients over 2024? With work winding down for the seasonal period, now is a great time to look back and consider how your protection conversations went this year.
Often when you reflect on those clients that didn't take out protection after being offered your professional advice, it can start to feel a little personal.
Almost like a relationship that isn't quite working out…where you start to think ‘is it you or me'?
We can perhaps however, start to think about how to ‘freshen up' that relationship with clients and begin the new year on the front foot. Having proactive conversations and tailoring products to individual needs can help you significantly increase your protection business going into 2025.
Freshening up
One element that Consumer Duty brought us in 2023 was a prompt to check in on the relationship with your clients.
When was the last time you reviewed how you interact with your clients?
If we think first about the ‘shop window' of your business. This could be your first meeting you have with a client. How does the client know that part of your qualified advice will be to discuss their protection needs?
The first date
As a first step towards this new refreshed relationship, consider when does a client appreciate the support you can offer them in respect of protection advice. Is it on your website? Do you talk about it in your social media posts? Are you introducing it early into the relationship with your client?
One tool that stands out as being a clear way to put protection on the radar for clients is the use of a risk calculator.
LV's Risk Reality calculator is uniquely a client facing tool that can be accessed directly by your clients. By highlighting the tool, your clients can start to appreciate the life risks that drive the need for protection. With no links to a product solution (and a clear recommendation to consult you as the adviser), the risks illustrated by the tool can be used within that initial ‘shop window' of your client interactions.
The conversation starter
As part of that new (or renewed) relationship with your client, you want that conversation to be engaging. And understand as much about their lives as you can to offer them the advice they need.
In this year's Reaching Resilience research carried out by LV=, the average UK worker is supporting 3 people from their income, and 10% are supporting 5 or more people from that income1. When your client considers their outgoings from their income, are they considering the loved ones that it supports or do their minds relate it to those financial transactions on their bank statements. Your clients have a wide variety of loved ones that depend on their income and are not just financial transactions.
If we again refer to Consumer Duty, one of the three cross-cutting rules is that ‘firms must enable and support retail customers to pursue their financial objectives'. It's easy to assume that paying a mortgage is a ‘financial objective', however consider what your own ‘financial objectives' would be. Perhaps it would be pension provision or just being able to support your family members financially. Asking a client what their own ‘financial objectives' are can create that personal attachment to how important their income is to support those objectives.
Taking that relationship to the next step
Now it's time to take your relationship into the next stage as you're both ready to commit… time for you to recommend the protection products that will be there to support your clients in their time of need. At LV=, we're committed to helping you ensure your clients can become financially resilient, and through our dedicated support and range of protection products we can help you support your clients when they need it most.
1LV= Reaching Resilience report: data used in this report comes from a survey of 4,000 nationally representative UK adults conducted for LV= by Opinium in between 23 November and 3 December 2023.
Further reading
