Protection gap won't close without better sales skills, says Terry Blackburn

The protection gap is not a regulatory failure. It is a sales failure, and mortgage and protection advisers have the means to fix it. That was the argument made by Terry Blackburn (pictured top), founder of The Wealthy Advisers Club, speaking at the organisation's latest conference in London this week.

Addressing an audience of several hundred financial services professionals at the Kensington Conference and Events Centre – an event that also featured former Special Forces soldier Ant Middleton, High Performance Podcast co-host and professor Damian Hughes, and endurance athlete Sean Conway – Blackburn made the case that the UK's persistent protection shortfall will only narrow when advisers invest seriously in sales process, questioning techniques, and the confidence to close.

"We all want to solve this protection gap that hasn't been solved for years now, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better," he said. "There are things we can do about it, and I want to work with you on it."

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The context is pressing. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) found in its final market study into pure protection – covering term assurance, critical illness, and income protection – that 58% of UK adults have no cover in place, with 59% of that group saying they had never considered their protection needs. The regulator has since set an 18-month deadline for meaningful progress, tasking the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries (AMI) with leading industry efforts to improve how advisers discuss protection with clients.

Closing the gap starts with sales

Blackburn's view on the root cause is uncomfortable but clear. Advisers are not investing enough in sales as a professional discipline, and many do not recognise it as something worth mastering.

"Sales is like a dying art, and I don't know why," he said. "We're proud to be salespeople, and actually learn and master this thing called sales, because it's just communicating ultimately. It's getting clients the outcome that they want, need, and desire."

He was direct about what this means in practice. Advisers who report that their clients do not want protection, he argued, are often describing their own reluctance to have the conversation properly, not a genuine client objection.

"Can you be better in your fact-finding? Can you learn how to close? Can you learn how to deal with objections? So therefore, if you're telling yourself you're not selling good protection and you can do something about it, what are you complaining about?"

He was careful to distinguish sales confidence from pressure selling. "Selling doesn't mean pushing stuff on people. It doesn't mean selling people something they don't need. It means finding a win-win solution. And the only way you can do that is ask questions. And the only way you can ask good questions is being good at selling."

This sits squarely within the broader picture reported on throughout 2026, including the FCA's identification of mortgage completion as a natural trigger point for protection conversations – a moment that only lands if the adviser has both the skill and the process to use it.

Early findings from AMI's 2026 Protection Viewpoint study, drawn from a survey of 3,000 UK consumers, found that between 79% and 95% of those who began a protection journey but did not complete a purchase said something could have changed their decision, pointing to a substantial re-engagement opportunity for advisers willing to follow up.

Why lead quality matters for protection

Blackburn also connected lead generation directly to protection outcomes – a link that is easily overlooked. Low-quality leads, he argued, produce a pipeline of clients with whom it becomes far harder to charge a fee or have a meaningful protection conversation.

His recommended approach is diversified across referrals, organic social media, paid Meta advertising, email marketing, and a strong, review-led website, with advisers tracking the return on each channel rather than running multiple activities without knowing which is working.

“Unless you know how much money each lead generation strategy is costing you, how much time it’s taking you, and what the result is, you can’t scale,” he said. “As soon as you know your return on time and your return on investment, you can double down on the ones that are most profitable.”

The practical implication for protection is direct. The right client in front of the right adviser, with the right process, is where cover gets written. AMI’s ongoing work to improve how mortgage advisers present protection to clients underlines that distribution – not product or price – remains the primary lever available to the industry.

Protection as a human skill

The skills required to sell protection are, in Blackburn's view, specifically those least vulnerable to automation. As artificial intelligence continues to reshape financial services, the human elements of advice – trust, questioning and relationship – are durable precisely because clients will not hand consequential decisions to a machine.

"Are you going to trust an AI agent with the biggest purchase of your life, with your family's future?" he said. "You're just not. This is actually a skill that's protected against AI, in my opinion."

Blackburn closed his section of the conference by setting out the long-term ambition of The Wealthy Advisers Club, which he said now counts approximately 2,400 members, making up around 10% of the adviser community.

His five-stage plan ends in a place the regulator would recognise. Stage five, in Blackburn's words, is plain enough: "The industry is uniformed, we're all in a better place, and the clients are better protected."