Tom Conner on the Lessons from the Drewberry Protection Insurance Survey 2015 – MPAF33

In a research survey, you’d usually associate with major provider companies, Drewberry Insurance’s Protection survey lifts the lid on what consumers think of life insurance, critical illness and income protection.

Whilst the results aren’t surprising they do remind us that we must renew our efforts to push out positive messages.

Listen to Tom explain why Drewberry set up the survey, what the sample was and the headline results.

Hear about the three top reasons consumers don’t consider protection insurance. Those three primary reasons are unchanged in almost twenty years and highlight more than ever before, the need for face to face financial advice.

That’s all right here in episode 33 of the Marketing Protection and Finance Podcast.

Tom Connor MPAF33

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Who is Tom Conner?

Tom is a director at Drewberry Insurance.

He was an adviser for 5 years but now spends most of his time running the business and managing a team of 15 other advisers.

Before that he worked in the City after graduating with a master’s degree in finance from Cambridge University.

Tom believes passionately about educating the wider public about the need for protection, and income protection in particular.

Outside of work Tom can often be found at the rugby watching England or the Harlequins and has the goal of skiing on every continent of the world, having already ticked three off the list

Things Tom and I discussed:

Tom’s Favourite Apps:

Tom’s Contact links:

Tom’s favourite books:

How to Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

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Is “Financial Rescue” a Better Name than Daft “Protection”?

Protection is a daft name for personal insurances.

I’ve always known that but inertia means we all stick to using it. But maybe it’s about time we did change it to something that means more to our customers.

Financial Rescue

Google “protection” and you won’t find links to financial products like life insurance and critical illness cover on the first few pages.

You’ll find insect repellant, condoms, airbags, and warm clothing. To the man on the street, it’s fairly obvious what these products provide protection against.

  • Insect repellent protects you from getting eaten alive by mosquitos when you go to the Caribbean. Or by midges if you go to Scotland.
  • Condoms protect against unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
  • Airbags protect car drivers and their passengers against injury in an accident.
  • Warm clothes protect you against the cold.

So, following the same logic from those bleeding obvious statements,  it’s easy to work out what protection insurance is for. Isn’t it?

  • Life insurance protects you from dying.
  • Critical illness insurance protects you from getting a critical illness.

Erm…

But of course they don’t, do they?

  • Life insurance protects your family or business against the financial consequences of dying.
  • Critical illness cover protects you, your family or business against the financial consequences of getting a critical illness.

So it’s not immediately obvious what our type of protection does. We need to explain it. And we don’t engage people, as a result.

So what could we call it as an alternative?

I recently took out a week’s trial on a software package called Grammarly. For writers, it checks grammar, spelling and points out when you overdose on passive language. My son was finding English difficult at school and I thought it would help. I forgot about the seven-day deadline and soon had a year’s subscription. I started using it to check my work.

First of all it shouted at me.

I was using the word “protection” too often it screamed.

Helpfully it provided some alternatives. “Security” was its favourite. But “security” is just as inappropriate as “protection”. So no help from Grammarly just a reminder that I overuse a term no one understands.

Then I was listening to Alan Newman speaking at the Protect Association meeting in London on the 16 January.

He suggested we should rename protection as, “Financial Rescue”.

I like that.

Financial Rescue!

Then the geek in me started thinking about International Financial Rescue and I started humming the Thunderbirds theme tune.

Calling International Financial Rescue

In my head, I could already see the TV advert (and the size of the budget I’d need to pay the royalties to Gerry Anderson’s estate).

  • Thunderbird One is life insurance.
  • Thunderbird Two is critical illness cover.
  • And Thunderbird Three is income protection.

Take out a subscription to International Financial Rescue and if you become ill or die they’ll send in the Financial Thunderbirds to sort you or your family out.

Now it’s Your Turn:

Okay International Financial Rescue exposes me as a Sci-Fi Fanboy. But that a better way of describing protection insurance? What do you think? What other alternatives could we use? Please post your ideas as a comment below. Or post a link to your own articles.

Let’s Lift Protection Up Where It Belongs

Music frames most of the events in our lives.

The first single you bought. That song playing when you shared your first intimate kiss? Tracks that motivated you through a challenging part of your life. Tunes that mark the sad passing of a friend or loved one.

Just before Christmas 2014, I read about the sad death of Joe Cocker. In fairness, he wasn’t my favourite artist. I grew up listening more to progressive rock than his style of pop. Recently I’ve grown older on Trance and Dance thanks to my involvement with Les Mills fitness classes.

But one Joe Cocker song still gives me butterflies and can bring a tear to my eye. His duet with Jennifer Warnes, “Up Where We Belong”.

Protection Up Where It Belongs

A teenager in 1982, I first heard the song in the fantastic movie, “An Officer and a Gentleman” starring Richard Gere. Full of teenage angst, I sympathised with Gere’s character, Zack Mayo, trying to find his place in the world and trading kicks with Drill Sergeant Foley.

At the end of the film, he appears at the factory where his girlfriend Paula works. He’s dressed in his crisp, pristine white Navy uniform.

The power chords of the instrumental version of “Up Where We Belong” follow his footsteps as he seeks her out among the machines. And then Joe Cocker starts singing as Gere picks her up and carries her off to a better life.

Yes, it was a cheesy, but emotional scene which still makes me blubber like a child over thirty years on.

The track made such an impression on me that I chose it as the first song my wife and I danced to at our wedding.

When I heard of Joe Cocker’s death, I wanted to listen to “Up Where We Belong” again. I couldn’t find it. I knew I had the “Officer” soundtrack on CD somewhere, but I couldn’t see it anywhere in my boxes. I rifled through a pile of old, neglected 7 inch final singles to no avail. I couldn’t find it on my PC either.

As a last resort I opened the Spotify App on my iPhone and within seconds I was listening to that gravelly voice. My eyes became moist. What a wuss.

The reason for telling this story is I learned a business lesson from Spotify recent, when I interviewed Scottish Widows’ Esther Dijkstra for my podcast.

She used Spotify as an example of how customer’s perceptions change over time. She explained that in the era of vinyl and CDs everyone wanted to own a physical copy of their music.

IPods consigned many CD collections to the rubbish tip as people converted to digital copies. Now they only wished to own an MP3 file.

Spotify has changed things again. Now people don’t need to own the track. They just want to listen to it on demand.

Esther’s story resonated with me because I had only just given in and subscribed to Spotify. I was clinging on to the old way of doing things. Hoarding CDs. Filling my hard drive with MP3 files. I finally realised I didn’t need to that anymore. Now I had instant access to millions of albums.

It’s great fun searching for music that framed so many memories. I found recordings of concerts I’d been to see as a student. I didn’t even know they’d released them.

If you can show someone a better way of doing things, they’ll embrace it with enthusiasm eventually.

Thinking of protection insurance, we haven’t invented a better way of transacting business yet. People still associate protection with scary messages about death, disability and disease, long intrusive application forms, and declined claims. Whilst online processes have improved upon the experience, public perception remains the same.

In our world, we’re still selling vinyl or CDs. We haven’t given consumers a modern alternative. Some are trying. Beagle Street and UnderwriteMe are working on redefining the experience. But we haven’t discovered our Spotify.

Is there a protection Spotify out there waiting to lift protection up where it belongs?

Now it’s your turn:

Will we ever discover a seismic shift in proposition? Please leave a comment below or share a link to your own thoughts.

In the meantime here’s a link to the video of “Up Where We Belong.”