Protection conversations clients avoid and advisers postpone

Aug 29
3 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Introduction

A client has a mortgage, two children and no income protection. The subject is raised briefly, the client says they will think about it, and it is moved to the next meeting. At the next meeting there are more pressing matters and it moves again.

Three years later they are still uninsured. The adviser was not negligent so much as unwilling to persist with a conversation nobody enjoys, and the client was relieved not to have it. Protection is simultaneously the least popular and the most consequential subject in personal financial advice. It is also the only area where the failure is discovered by somebody else, at the worst time.

1. Protection conversations clients avoid are avoided by advisers too

Recognise the collusion.

Clients do not want to discuss illness and death, and advisers do not want to press an uncomfortable subject or appear to be selling. The two preferences align, and the result is a subject that is raised and never concluded.

2. Start from what would actually happen

Concrete rather than abstract.

If they could not work for a year, what would happen to the mortgage, the household and the children. This is a specific question about their own life and it produces a different response from a general discussion about protection products.

3. Use their own numbers

The calculation that lands.

How long their savings would last, what any employer arrangement provides and when it stops, and what remains. Most people substantially overestimate all three, and seeing the actual figures does more than any argument.

4. Deal with the objection that it will not happen

The core resistance.

People understand mortality in the abstract and not personally. Discussing incapacity rather than death, which is both more likely and easier to imagine, frequently opens the conversation where death does not.

5. Address the cost objection with a real figure

Not a general reassurance.

Clients assume cover is expensive and are frequently wrong. An actual monthly figure, alongside what it protects, converts a vague worry about cost into a comparison they can make.

6. Do not solve everything at once

Partial is far better than nothing.

A client who cannot afford full cover can start with the most critical element. An all-or-nothing recommendation produces nothing considerably more often than it produces everything.

7. Record the recommendation and any refusal

An obligation and a protection.

Where a client declines cover you recommended, the file should record what was advised, what was declined and why. This matters professionally and it matters enormously if a claim situation ever arises.

8. Revisit it at life events

The moments when the answer changes.

A new mortgage, a child, a marriage, a business, a change in employment. Somebody who declined two years ago may respond entirely differently after one of these, and a review is the natural moment to raise it again.

9. Follow the rules on how you present it

A regulated recommendation like any other.

Suitability, disclosure and how the product is described are all governed. Enthusiasm for an important subject is not a substitute for the requirements, and both must be satisfied.

Explain what existing cover actually does. Many clients believe an employer arrangement or a mortgage-related policy covers more than it does, and correcting that misunderstanding is frequently the whole conversation. It also demonstrates that you are checking what they have rather than selling something new.

Conclusion

Persist with the conversation, because both parties would prefer to postpone it indefinitely.

Begin with what would actually happen to their household, use their own figures on savings and employer cover, discuss incapacity rather than only death because it is easier to imagine, give a real monthly cost rather than reassurance, accept partial cover instead of insisting on a complete solution, document any recommendation that is declined, revisit it at life events when the answer changes, follow the suitability and disclosure requirements, and check what their existing cover genuinely provides.