2023 Protection Service Review

Service Review

Protection service review

With many providers offering similar products, service is now often one of the key differentiators for advisers. As part of Defaqto’s protection service satisfaction survey, Level term assurance, critical illness with life cover and decreasing term assurance remain the most popular product options.

The study was conducted between August and September 2022 employing online fieldwork techniques; it measured the relative importance of ten satisfaction categories and identified the advisers’ preferred providers of individual protection business.

The study measured how satisfied the advisers were with their preferred providers and identified where expectations were being met by cross-matching ranked importance with ranked satisfaction.

By Ben Heffer
Insight Consultant (Wealth & Protection)

February 2023

Top three positions

For the second year running, Shepherds Friendly made the most appearances in the top three positions for satisfaction across all categories. Canada Life, Vitality, Royal London and Guardian also secured a significant number of top three positions.

Order of importance

The ranked order of importance was largely unchanged from last year’s study and, with two exceptions, the average importance scores varied little from previous scores.

Preferred Protection Providers

Legal & General and Aviva were the preferred providers with the most nominations, but with 8% less support than last year. Royal London, again in third place, experienced an increase in support following a large dip in 2021.

Number of Protection Products

The average number of different protection products being used by advisers has been dropping year on year and now stands at just 4.79.

Level term assurance, critical illness with life cover and decreasing term assurance remain the most popular product options; however, they received significantly less support this time and interest in more peripheral product types has increased as advisers pursue more cost-effective options for clients. By contrast, income protection insurance, the fourth most popular product with advisers, held its ground with a similar level of support this year as last year.
Advisers are using 5.2 protection providers on average. This is greater than last year’s 4.7 but lower than the 6.1 recorded in 2020. Legal & General and Aviva remain the most popular choice for individual protection products with around 60% of advisers recommending them; however, their support was significantly lower than that recorded in last year’s study.
The industry recorded a positive set of performance results, with weighted satisfaction again increasing for the second year for all categories, and with the higher scores cast largely for the most important categories. Business development managers again saw the greatest increase.
A cross-match of ranked importance and ranked satisfaction demonstrates a good correlation between importance and performance. The industry is meeting or exceeding expectations for seven out of the ten service categories. However, Claims handling and administration, the category ranked most important, again attracted a significantly lower satisfaction score than that required to meet expectations.

View the full report here