Here is a collection of LifeQuote press releases along with regular updates to our systems.
Four big banks are among the 17 firms accepted into the FCA's robo-advice development project 'advice unit', the regulator has revealed.
In a statement released today, the FCA named the participants in its first two rounds of the project, which aims to help firms develop automated advice and discretionary investment management models.
Legal & General have launched a Buy Now life insurance policy with Direct Life which will be initially available on Confused.com.
Legal & General's new Buy Now policy will use Direct Life's common question set, allowing clients to choose between Legal & General, Aviva and Beagle Street's Buy Now offerings without needing to complete the full medical underwritten journey.
Lapsed policies and clawback is not just a financial issue; it represents many hours lost in precious adviser time.
While it will never be possible to stop all lapses, there are lessons that can be learnt from across the industry and indeed from the direct market in how best to make your business 'stickier'.
Full article from Mortgage Introducer
Emily Perryman asks the duo about their plans to make buying protection easier then ever.
Being a technology company in the competitive fintech landscape would worry a lot of executives, but LifeQuote's Neil McCarthy and Rob Quayle are confident in their ability to stand out from the crowd.
Full article on Health Insurance
Specialist armed forces intermediary, Insignia Underwriting, has launched a bespoke online protection portal for military personnel and their families.
This is the second specialist military intermediary to launch with LifeQuote this year.
LifeQuote has launched a new case tracking system with real time updates on all protection insurance cases.
Advisers can now see, in a summary view, the status of all protection applications from all insurers in one place, whether ‘in progress', ‘awaiting start date', ‘at risk' or ‘completed'.
Also available on FT Adviser and Mortgage Introducer.
Through LifeQuote, advisers will now be able to search, quote and apply for Scottish Widows protection products on a single platform.
The Scottish Widows products now available through LifeQuote include standalone life cover, standalone critical illness, life and critical illness, family income benefit and critical illness and business protection.
LifeQuote has rebranded with a new website as well as fresh marketing and campaign material.
After last year's management buyout the firm has redefined its purpose to focus on helping advisers grow their protection business.
Full article on Mortgage Introducer
Specialist armed forces insurer, Trinity Insurance Services, has launched an online protection portal for armed forces personnel and their families.
The portal provides a panelled aggregation service that allows forces personnel to see if they qualify for a range of life and protection policies given their current military status.
As advisers know, cost plays an important, if not overriding, part of many clients’ decision-making process with respect to their protection needs.
With cost of housing continuing to rise, many home buyers, who represent between 35% to 50% of all first time protection sales, are understandably short of disposable income; with generation rent having the same affordability issues.
Mike Dodd, previous CEO of Sirius Financial Solutions, has joined Direct Life as a non-exec director.
He brings 39 years of business, IT and entrepreneurship experience to his new role.
He spent nine years at Sirius Financial Solutions, where he was business development director and later CEO of the UK business.
Mark Myers, British Friendly's outgoing CEO, has joint Direct Life as non-exec director.
Myers stepped down as CEO of British Friendly in September 2016 and was succeeded by Ian Clark. The appointment follows Direct Life's management buy-out in October 2016 by MD Rob Quayle and Sales & Marketing Director Neil McCarthy.
The past decade has seen a huge rise in the numbers renting as opposed to buying. Renting overtook ownership in 2004 for 21-25 year-olds, and in 2011 for 26-30 year-olds.
Historically, there was a perception that renters largely didn’t need protection cover. But for today’s renters, the loss of an income would be just as devastating as for someone with a mortgage. This is worrying, as the protection industry is largely not currently set up to handle generation rent.
Advisers within the mortgage, pension and protection industries could be next in line to fall within call recording legislation, according to LifeQuote.
Full article on Mortgage Introducer
Mortgage advisers using LifeQuote’s platform will now have access to Aviva’s full range of protection products.
Aviva recently launched the range, which offers both personal and business protection products.
Its personal protection range includes life insurance, critical illness, income protection, free parent life cover and guaranteed whole life cover.
Full article on Mortgage Adviser
Also available on Financial Reporter and Mortgage Solutions
Direct Life, which owns LifeQuote, is being purchased from Cardif Pinnacle Insurance Holdings Ltd, by its managing director Rob Quayle and sales and marketing director Neil McCarthy.
The FCA has already approved the change in control, and completion is expected at the end of October.
Direct Life employs over 90 people in Chichester and provides a whole of market protection portal, and a fully outsourced case management service for advisers.
Also available on Cover
ABR editor Rob Kingsbury visited outsourced protection admin service LifeQuote to see first hand what the company offers and how it operates
When I meet with Neil McCarthy, marketing director of LifeQuote, at the company’s Chichester office, he shows me an article from a national newspaper. It’s about a widow whose life insurance claim on her husband has been rejected because of an error made on the application form. “It struck me that this is just the kind of situation, where the client has lost out and the financial adviser is blamed, that we can help avoid,” says McCarthy (pictured left with MD Rob Quayle)).
Full article on Adviser Business Review
LifeQuote has warned that the MIFID requirement for advisers to record phone calls will be replicated in protection.
Advisers will have to record all phone calls under incoming Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) rules, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)said in its latest consultation paper.
Initially, the regulation will only apply to investments, though the broader more generic regulatory requirements for all financial services follow a similar line, regardless of subject area.
Also available on Mortgage Introducer, Best Advice, Financial Reporter and Cover.
iPipeline's quote and apply portal, SolutionBuilder® can now seamlessly link to LifeQuote's outsourced protection case management service.
The integration allows advisers using iPipeline's SolutionBuilder to seamlessly access the LifeQuote platform and transfer cases to LifeQuote's outsourced case management team to handle the collection of the application data, case processing with insurers, and chasing of medical evidence.
Full article on Health Insurance Daily
Also available on Professional Adviser and Cover.
LifeQuote is now enabling advisers to submit an application based on any quote from either an insurer's site directly or another quote portal.
This enables LifeQuote to ensure that whatever the illustration or product combination the adviser wishes to recommend, provided they have an agency with the insurer in question LifeQuote are able to process the case on the advisers behalf in the normal way.
This enables the adviser to take advantage of the tele-underwriting and administration services they provide.
LifeQuote has introduced a text service for intermediary support after trials showed improved responses compared with emails and telephone contact.
The provider had previously used texts as basic reminders or updates but now it has linked the text to workflow to increase the length of message and allow a reply.
LifeQuote said this new method of communication is already driving immediate responses and is yielding double the number of immediate replies compared to telephone and email.
Intrinsic Financial Services has announced that all 3,000 advisers across the Group will have the option to use LifeQuote from 3rd February 2014.
The new protection platform has been designed for the network's advisers utilising LifeQuote's quote and research tools. LifeQuote has also built in the ability for Intrinsic advisers to submit the application direct to the recommended product provider themselves.
“A more important issue we need to be alert to is the challenge posed to the pooling of risk. With more information, it may be possible to reduce the cost of cover for the fit.
“By the same token though, insurance could become more expensive and possibly unobtainable for those who need it most, and there is the question as to whether an even greater divergence in price and availability is a socially positive outcome.”
Adam Higgs considers what advisers need to know about the main protection quote portals.
Quotation portals have always been an important tool to help advisers compare protection options. However, as the protection market and products have moved on, they have often been slow to keep up with the changes.
Over the past few years the portal suppliers have been working hard to catch up, introducing a number of new features that aim to make the adviser’s job easier. Currently, there are four mainstream quotation portals available to advisers, provided by iPipeline, IRESS, Direct Life...
People approaching retirement may take out protection policies to shore up their pension, Neil McCarthy has predicted.
Ahead of the changes to annuities in April, the sales and marketing director for protection portal LifeQuote said he expected to see more sales of term or whole-of-life insurance, including funeral plans.
He said: “When people choose drawdown as opposed to an annuity after the April 6th changes, there could be an increased demand for protection policies.
Also available on Financial Reporter.
The changes in income drawdown after April mean that annuitants sold single life policies may take out life insurance to cover their spouse, LifeQuote has said.
An FCA investigation found that 530,000 widows may have been left without an income because their husbands were not told payments from their single life annuity would cease on their death.
Advisers should avoid the mistakes of general insurance and offer new ways for consumers to buy protection, writes Neil McCarthy, director of Direct Life.
In 1989, Churchill Insurance was among the first to air TV adverts for direct insurance. Competitors soon followed, and a revolution in the way personal lines insurance was purchased was born, changing forever the relationship between customer, intermediary and provider.
“Pension advice takes up such a considerable amount of time that protection doesn’t usually get much airplay,” Gledhill says.
With the average pension pot just £36,800, according to the Association of British Insurers, there isn’t actually that much to protect either, Gledhill points out.
“People are more likely to use any cash they take from their pension to reduce debt, pay off their mortgage, buy a new car, or take a holiday, rather than buy life insurance,” he says.
But Gledhill does see one potentially optimistic opportunity, as more employers set up auto-enrolment schemes in the workplace, and many then take the next step of offering protection as well.
Full article on Health Insurance Daily
But must advisers also share some of the blame for IP’s failure to make inroads?
Jennifer Gilchrist, senior product manager at insurer Bright Grey, suggests that some specialise in areas such as wealth management, and are therefore less familiar with protection.
“It is important that these advisers understand their clients’ protection requirements and make protection part of their advice process,” she says.
Full article on Health Insurance Daily
LifeQuote are assessing the possibility of offering advisers personalised call recordings ahead of any regulatory changes from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
LifeQuote already records all client and adviser conversations to support advisers and insurers with non-disclosure issues. The recordings are then held on the adviser's behalf, however if the FCA requires advisers to have a record of all client telephone calls LifeQuote will either hold them centrally or provide data files to advisers.
Some mortgage brokers recall vividly how, during the 1990s, they used to compare the best deals on offer via a hard copy of Moneyfacts – which typically became out of date as soon as it was published.
In those days it might have seemed cutting-edge but times have changed and any intermediaries who proved allergic to technology have probably either found alternative employment or retired.
Full article on Mortgage Strategy
Direct Life has announced it is looking to attract up to 20 new staff having recently added 15 full time and part time staff.
The Chichester-based life insurance specialist is also interviewing for senior developers to add to their exisiting IT development team. The new staff are being hired as part of the company's expansion plans with administrators and call-centre staff required to meet the demands of new business volumes. Direct Life is the parent company of LifeQuote and owned by Cardif Pinnacle, part of BNP Paribas. Rob Quayle, managing director, Direct Life said: "We have a great sense of belonging here.
LifeQuote has introduced a suite of short term income protection (STIP) policies to support their existing income protection (IP) panels.
The new service offers products with payment periods of 1, 2 and 5 years with the sum insured based on gross annual income and covering inability to work through illness injury or loss. The new service was launched to offer a cross-provider comparison and transactional service to meet demand for a broader range of IP products.
Also available on Financial Reporter, Mortgage Introducer and Best Advice.
As Direct Life & Pension Services celebrates it's 25th birthday, Neil McCarthy charts major changes in the industry since his firm's inception.
Products like critical illness cover and income protection from different providers seem to undergo almost continual changes – so how can advisers best keep up to speed? Stephanie Spicer looks at what is out there.
Full article from Health & Protection Daily
LifeQuote has said it expects to see insurers include health tracking data for protection pricing along the same lines as has been adopted for private medical insurance (PMI) policies.
The protection portal and administration service from DirectLife said it is therefore reviewing how best to capture health tracking data from the likes of the Apple watch or FitBit.
No no protection insurer writing UK business uses individuals' health tracking to price policies at outset, although engagement with the Vitality program during the policy term can certainly reduce premiums, LifeQuote has said.
This article was also published as a print version in FT Adviser and Life Insurance International. To view the full articles please click here and here.
LifeQuote has launched a premium driven service to support the traditional sum assured approach, following the Mortgage Market Review (MMR) and its resultant focus on cash flow for borrowers.
The service allows advisers and their clients, who identify a protection insurance need, but who have limited cash available, to quote on what this will buy in terms of cover rather than necessarily what the optimal level of cover might be.
LifeQuote has launched a service to help borrowers who would otherwise dismiss protection as unaffordable due to cash flow pressures resulting from the Mortgage Market Review (MMR).
The service allows advisers and their clients, who identify a protection insurance need, but who have limited cash available, to quote on what this will buy in terms of cover rather than necessarily what the optimal level of cover might be.
Neil McCarthy, sales and marketing director at LifeQuote, said: "The overwhelming view is that premium driven quotations should not be seen as a compromise as having some cover is vastly preferable to having none at all."
The long and the short of STIP
A flurry of activity in the short-term income protectoin (IP) market means the product is back on the agenda - but should it be? Or is 'gold standard' IP the only real option? Harvey Jones reports
Income protection (IP) is an unbeatable long-term insurance product that almost hardly anybody buys.
Short-term income protection (STIP) is an inferior substitute that is, perhaps embarrassingly, proving increasingly popular with brokers and public.
Full article on Health Insurance Daily
Tenet Group has confirmed it will expand its protection proposition with its advisers now having the option of using LifeQuote's comparison and illustration tools.
LifeQuote will offer all Tenet advisers the ability to outsource the application, administration and processing of life, CI, IP and whole of life cases.
Lifquote said this would "significantly [reduce] the time an adviser needs to spend on a case and [would create] more time for them to spend with their clients."
Also available on FT Adviser and Health Insurance & Protection Daily.
Insurance premium tax (IPT) is to rise to 9.5% by November, the chancellor has confirmed in the Summer Budget.
The IPT rate was previously 6%,
Chancellor George Osborne said: "Britain's insurance premium tax is well below tax rates in many other countries.
Friends Life Individual Protection has announced the addition of fracture cover for its life, critical illness and income protection products to the adviser portal and administration service from Direct Life.
The product has been launched on LifeQuote, which gives advisers the ability to search, select and transact on a single platform.
Its fracture cover pays a lump sum of up to £2,100 for one of 18 specified fractures during any 12-month period.
Our Ask the Experts column is your chance to put industry figures on the spot. In this edition Neil McCarthy, sales and marketing director at LifeQuote, answers your question.
Q: With protection sales through mortgage advisers said to have slipped since the upturn in the mortgage market, how has the Mortgage Market Review affected business volume?
A: Unfortunately, early indications are while the MMR may have achieved some of its objectives, it may have also had unintended consequences...
Full article on Mortgage Solutions
Also available on Mortgage Introducer
LifeQuote is warning any adviser that offers a call back service to beware of an increase in 070 phone scams.
The protection insurance service is warning advisers and their staff to be vigilant to avoid being stung by fraudulent premium rate call backs for quotes or product information. Fraudsters are targeting financial services industry firms using 070 numbers as many companies offer telephone call back.
Full article on Mortgage Strategy
Also available on Cover and Money Marketing.
Direct Life and Aviva have launched what they claims to be the UK’s first fully comparable ‘buy now’ life insurance policy.
The new service will be launched simultaneously for both intermediated sales through Direct Life’s LifeQuote service and direct to customers via the aggregator site Confused.com.
Advisers and direct customers will be able to compare term products from multiple providers using a brief and standardised underwriting question set, and then opt for a ‘buy-now’ life insurance policy with Aviva.
Also available on Money Marketing.
Confused.com has become the first comparison site to use Quote+ technology to aid customers in buying their life insurance, with a typical application less than two minutes.
Quote+ technology will use the customer's responses and match them against the underwriting criteria of Confused.com's panel of UK life insurance providers. Customers will now be able to compare competitive life insurance products across insurers and have a clearer indication as to whether they will be accepted for the quoted prices offered or whether they will be declined.
Premier Choice Group (PCG), the health and protection intermediary, was called in by Thirteen Group, the North East housing management company to offer health insurance advice and protection products to its employees.
Thirteen Group manages more than 32,000 homes and is one of the largest employers in the North East with 1,400 staff from executive and director level to administrative and skilled trades staff.
LifeQuote has added critical illness (CI) to Quote+ which it expects to lead to higher conversions for brokers and more clients accepted at standard rates.
Previously only the ability to compare term products was available. The new CI comparison technology allows advisers to compare products across insurers with a far higher degree of confidence as to whether customers will be accepted at standard rates, rated or declined.
Direct Life has updated its LifeQuote protection portal to automatically take into account income protection providers’ criteria when it comes to continued payouts for own occupation claims.
Direct Life says advisers have previously struggled to assess the different policies providers have in place for own occupation claims after the first 12 months.
The LifeQuote system has now been updated to factor in this so-called “secondary level of disability” definition.
Full article on Money Marketing
Also available on Cover Magazine.
Adviser firm Positive Solutions has linked up with LifeQuote in an aim to support advisers post-RDR.
The move will enable Positive Solutions advisers to use the portal to compare costs of different benefits on a range of cover as a single benefit or part of a menu plan. Andy Bell, mortgage and general insurance manager at Positive Solutions, said: "It is about the whole piece and reminding advisers of the opportunities.
Quote+, a universal application process for protection insurance products is to be rolled by Direct Life to the adviser community within weeks.
Currently under trial with ten protection providers Quote+ pre-screens applicants and seeks to address the huge fall off between initial application and final conversion.
Historically the protection industry has not made the advice process an easy one for advisers.
Unfortunately, given the regulatory backdrop, rather than complete an application form in a fully compliant manner, it is often easier for a customer to ignore protection all together, rather than enter a journey that is not always as conducive to the final purchase of a product as it might be.
Full article on Money Marketing
LifeQuote has launched a free business protection insurance service for general insurance brokers who want to extend their insurance offering within the business market.
Available through its LifeQuote service, brokers will be able to use the business protection quote and apply service which includes key person cover, business loan protection and partnership and shareholder cover. A member of LifeQuote's Express Underwriting team will contact the client, on the broker's instructions, to complete the application form, and then process the case to completion with the provider.
Most people reading this will be able to dip into their wallet and pull out some form of reward or loyalty card.
If you’re anything like me you’ll have two or three; points for shopping at the same supermarket, bonuses for topping up at the right petrol station, discounts for staying with a particular chain of hotels. Put simply, giving something back to loyal customers encourages repeat business, referrals to friends and family and synergies with other business areas which might complement your own.
LifeQuote has teamed up with advisory service What Protect to provide a protection platform which provides both advised and non-advised solutions.
LifeQuote, the intermediary brand of Direct Life and Pensions Services Ltd, has said the online platform will produce quotations and application services for clients who require Life cover, Critical Illness and Income Protection.
LV= has launched its new Relevant Life Cover product on LifeQuote's Business Protection area.
The launch follows "strong demand" from advisers for business protection insurance, as small businesses have grown by 200,000 in the last two years to 4.8 million. Relevant Life Cover is a tax efficient way for small businesses to provide stand-alone, single life, death in service cover for employees, high earning individuals and salaried directors.
A brand is more influential than we might think, even in advised sales. Rob Quayle explains.
A great brand is one of a company’s most valuable assets. A memorable name is critical to that brand’s success. Top brands equate to successful sales, or so most marketeers would have us believe. But is that really the case in protection?
For more historic press releases please contact salessupport@lifequote.co.uk or call 01243 791199.
Royal London has made changes to its Income Protection policy to offer more benefits and an increased amount of cover.
Earlier this year AIG began offering Term and Whole of Life cover to non-UK domiciled clients who may have been impacted by changes to inheritance tax legislation. They have now announced they will extend the cover available to these clients to include Family Income Benefit as well.
A key concern of parents who take out protection is that their children will also be covered against an unfortunate illness. To try and help make the situation less stressful Royal London includes Children's Critical Illness cover at no extra cost when taking out Critical Illness cover on a personal menu plan.
Royal London has announced it has launches E-AMRAs to obtain customer consent for GP Reports under the Access to Medical Reports Act.
Liverpool Victoria recently announced they wanted advisers to be 'protected and proud' by having their own income protection policy.
This used to be an automatic evidence requirement when underwriting large sum assured policies. The HIV requirement has been removed as incidence rates are reducing and survival rates have increased, the insurer said.
Legal & General have announced they are offering a Price Beater Proposition to match or beat premiums given by other insurers.
LV= has added an additional benefit to their personal protection customers from June 6th 2017 - LV= Doctor Services provided by Square Health.
LV= Doctor Services gives your client access to three expert medical services in one app.
Aviva have advised from the 15th June 2017 they will be making changes to the Friends Life pipeline cases.
For more information please read the full update.
Royal London has recently made some changes to their expiry limits for Income Protection along with a rate change to some life cover plans from Monday 24th April.
With effect from Monday 10th April 2017 the default assumed interest rate for Scottish Widows quotes on the LifeQuote Portal will change from 7% to 8% to bring this in line with other insurers.
From Monday 10th April, Aegon are launching a new support service from cazden for all Business Protection customers in addition to their existing health and wellbeing services.
There is also an Easter sale running from 7th April – 5th May and includes all Level and Indexed, Whole of Life and Gift Inter Vivos policies which runs alongside changes to Income Protection rates.
Liverpool Victoria business protection and Multi Benefit plans can now be quoted and applied for via the LifeQuote system. Here is some information from LV about their business protection products.
LV=are committed to protecting and supporting UK businesses, through a range of Business Protection products which are easy to recommend, and are backed up with quality support and service when it's needed most.
LifeQuote is proud to launch our new Case Tracking system.
We have listened to the feedback from advisers using the system and introduced some great functionality to give you greater access 24/7 from any device.
You will still have access to the same case information along with new features such as commission information, next actions and additional documents. You can now also search efficiently for categories of clients.
We are pleased to confirm that Scottish Widows Protection products will be available to quote and apply through LifeQuote from 2nd March 2017.
The products that will be available are:
- Life only
- Life & Critical Illness
- Critical Illness only
- Family Income Benefit
- Family Income Benefit & Critical Illness
- Business Protection applications including Relevant Life
From today the LifeQuote Income Protection quotes services will calculate on the following basis for these insurers to run alongside updates that we were made to Aviva recently.
Whole of Market Intrinsic Restricted
An increasing number of insurers are requiring a client email address to be provided for submission of an application. They use the email address to set clients up with an online account for access to policy documents and with some insurers access to other policies they may hold e.g. car, pet, home.
Of the 11 insurers we work with, 6 of them now require email addresses and as the insurers update their systems we expect this number to increase.
On Monday 21st November 2016 The Exeter launches a new range of income protection plans.
Pure Protection and Income One Plus are both built on the same foundations as the previous plans, but include premium savings of up to 50% as well as a number of other enhancements.
Here is some information from The Exeter on how they have made their products simpler, more flexible and more affordable.
Aviva have introduced a compelling package helping advisers to provide a greater choice to a wider range of clients. the tree new products are Aviva Life Insurance +, Critical Illness + and Income Protection +, all of which include a range of benefits and options for upgraded cover.
Booking a slot for your clients to complete their telephone applications is now even easier following an improvement to our online booking system.
If there is only one slot available in the time period, but you would like us to speak to "Both application" then the booking screen will demonstrate there is no availability in that session.
Following feedback from a number of advisers we have now improved our apply screens.
Royal London made some changes to enhance their products with effect from Monday 3rd October 2016.
Please take a look at our comparison charts to see the additional conditions covered within their Critical Illness product. They have also reduced the survival period of Standalone Critical illness from 14 days to 10 days.
We are pleased to offer the new Critical Illness product from AIG which is now live across LifeQuote.
Key3 pays a lump sum if your client is diagnosed with one of the Key3 critical illnesses - cancer, heart attack and stroke. These conditions accounted for almost 80% of the adult critical illness claims paid out by AIG in 2015.
The LifeQuote team are working closely with Aviva to deliver some exciting new enhancements which we anticipate being able to deliver from Tuesday 7th April.
This launch is a significant development in the Protection marketplace which will give our partners the opportunity to access a brand new quote and apply journey complimented by an enhanced product set with Custom Multi Benefit Functionality.
We update our sales aids on a regular basis to ensure you have relevant documents and comparison charts to assist with providing advice.
Following feedback from a number of advisers, we have now added a new option in the Links section which enables you to source your own trust documentation directly from the insurers website.
Aviva have developed two new products which are now available on LifeQuote.
Relevant Life Insurance
Business Life Insurance Options
With effect from Monday 20th June Aegon have enhanced both Personal and Business Protection menus. The Critical Illness cover now includes:
For more information, please click here.
We are currently updating our comparison charts and they will be available shortly.
Following feedback from a number of advisers, we have now changed the format of our medical question in the Decision in Principle tool to make it easier for you to complete.
Legal & General are no longer quoting for a five year payment period on their short term Income Protection product.
This has now changed to a 2 year payment period with immediate effect and LifeQuote has been updated to support this.
With effect from Monday 13th June Zurich have made a total of 50 updates to their Critical Illness products and are now offering:
Following adviser feedback and significant recent growth in this area of Protection, LifeQuote is pleased to announce the addition of Whole of Life Assurance to its vast portfolio of products.
From today LifeQuote has added the following options to its product suite;
