Consumer trust is the missing ingredient in protection advice, AMI briefing reveals
When the question of consumer trust came up at the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries’ (AMI) media briefing last week, one name kept entering the conversation. Martin Lewis, the founder of MoneySavingExpert and one of the UK's most recognised consumer finance commentators. An industry with no shortage of expertise and passion for protection found itself debating what it would take to reach more consumers and whose voice might help do it.
AMI’s report found that 60% of UK consumers have never received a protection quote, rising to 82% among those who cite cost as their reason for not having cover. The briefing went further, with panellists setting out what different parts of the market need to do differently.
Barry Kellegher, market development manager at Legal & General, said the industry needed to pay attention to what the focus groups are telling it. Consumers raised Martin Lewis’s name when discussing who they would trust on financial matters. Kellegher said that trust is the point.
Lewis was seen as being on consumers’ side, which was the exact opposite of how they described their experiences with advisers. “When it came to someone like Martin Lewis – their beacon of someone to talk to – we have to listen,” he said. “What has Martin got that maybe we’re not always demonstrating as an industry as a whole? It’s not what we say, it’s how we behave. AMI’s research is a great launchpad to make sure we engage with our clients a little bit differently.”
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The trust problem runs deeper than price
Kellegher said themes of jargon, perceived adviser self-interest, and a lack of clarity around what different products cover ran consistently through the focus group sessions. Only around half of advisers are raising protection at the start of the client interview. "If only half are raising it at the start, that's half who are already making it secondary and less important," he said. "There's a lot that we can change in the front bit."
Andy Philo, director of strategic partnerships at Vitality, said the industry needs to be clear-eyed about what the data is actually showing. "We shouldn't confuse a lack of protection with a rejection of protection," he said. "This research highlights an engagement gap as much as a protection gap."
Philo also pointed to a practical framing that advisers are underusing with clients. Unlike car or home insurance, a protection premium does not change if a client's circumstances change after the policy is taken out, provided they were truthful on the application. "Those are the sort of scenarios we've got to paint when we're sitting with clients," he said.
When asked whether the industry needed its own Martin Lewis, AMI chief executive Stephanie Charman said the question deserves a serious answer. "How do we reach out to Martin Lewis and others? There are other prolific people in the consumer world," she said. "But I also think we need to help our existing base of fantastic intermediaries have a stronger voice with their consumers."
Re-engagement is the missing piece
AMI’s research found that among consumers who dropped out of the protection journey because their circumstances changed, 38% said being contacted again later could have made a difference. A further 38% said a simpler way to restart the process would have helped.
Charman said this is central to how the industry needs to reframe the problem. "Consumers saying no to taking a protection policy is rarely final," she said. "When consumers say no, what they're actually saying is maybe not today, but talk to me in the future."
Stacy Penn, head of policy at AMI, said the four calls for change in this year's report reflect that shift in thinking. "The research makes clear that closing the protection gap cannot be achieved simply by encouraging advisers to have more conversations," she said. "It requires a broader shift in how protection is positioned, how consumers are engaged, and how the market responds to their needs."
The remortgage window is not enough
The briefing surfaced a significant structural problem for mortgage advisers who time their protection conversations around fixed-rate deal endings. While 41% of advisers said they raise protection at remortgage, AMI's research found that only 25% of consumers expect to return to their existing adviser at that point. Twenty-four per cent plan to go directly to their bank or building society, and 18% intend to arrange their next mortgage themselves.
Charman said the solution is not to abandon the mortgage journey as a prompt but to build engagement around it rather than depend on it. "It's not just about fixed moments in time," she said. "We can't keep saying we need to look at renters. We now need to actually seriously look at what routes we can utilise to get to them."
Philo said renters are widely recognised as an underserved market. "It's an area that we as insurers have to focus more on," he said. AMI's own data shows that 41% of renters are aged 18 to 34, a demographic building financial commitments without the mortgage trigger that typically prompts a protection conversation.
Establishing need before price
The briefing's Q&A tackled how mortgage advisers should balance being upfront about cost without reducing the whole conversation to price. Charman said the focus groups had already provided a clear steer. "We recognise that once we showed consumers the quotes, a lot of them said they weren't expecting that," she said. "But if you don't establish need first, you risk the whole conversation coming back to price."
The FCA's Pure Protection Market Study, a regulatory review examining whether the market for life insurance, critical illness cover, and income protection is working well for consumers, reached broadly similar conclusions, stopping short of prescriptive intervention in favour of industry-led action. AMI has been selected by the FCA to lead a cross-industry adviser engagement initiative as part of that process, with the industry expected to demonstrate progress over the next 12 to 18 months.
Charman said the work ahead requires the sector to face into difficult questions. "Could we do something different from a product and cost perspective, without taking away value and providing a product that isn't there when a customer needs to claim?" she said. "Nothing is off the table for us exploring as part of our initiative."
The regulator has identified approximately 50 million protection needs among UK consumers, a scale that makes it clear no single route, no single voice, and no single conversation will be enough to close the gap. Charman's conclusion is straightforward: "We have to address every single route possible to help those consumers build their awareness and engage with protection."
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