SEVEN FAMILIES PROJECT UPDATE
From Seven Families to your family… we’re engaging clients and introducers through interactive storytelling, be it face-to-face, in the workplace, or online www.7families.co.uk
What we really wanted to do with the Seven Families project was to bring health and disability charities, individual and group protection providers, reinsurers and financial advisers together in common cause, in collaboration and under a single brand. With the aim to:
- raise consumer, adviser and influencer awareness of the financial impact of long term illness or disability
- help seven real and diverse working age families who were facing financial meltdown following a health breakdown
- demonstrate the value of financial resilience, independent living support, rehabilitation and counselling, through trying to help get people back to work
Why did the Seven Families project focus purely on raising awareness and resilience rather than product pushing?
For too long as an industry our message has been seen as a thinly veiled attempt to sell more policies. With the British public suspicious of the industry’s motives and confused by over complicated language, technical solutions and scary statistics. In recent years visceral protection advertising from a number of providers has managed to engage consumers’ emotions and feelings. However, the Seven Families team wanted to truly make a difference. Health and disability charities detailed the needs presented to them in times of crisis and highlighted loss of ability to earn as a key issue. When people can’t pay their bills every other aspect of their finances falls down like a house of cards, especially with savings levels at a historic low. And if the worst does happen, it can have disastrous financial consequences, impacting a person’s ability to maintain their lifestyle and service commitments.
The project at no point focused on any specific type of product solution. However, it has been viewed by a number of journalists and advisers as an income protection campaign. This is not the case, as five of our seven families could have made critical illness claims and indeed one did. And whilst that family paid off their mortgage with their claim proceeds, they quickly had another issue, a significant reduction in income. The replacement level of benefit available from working age welfare was not enough for them to maintain their level of lifestyle. We viewed it important to focus simply on improving financial resilience and demonstrating the benefits and outcomes of appropriate protection advice, product solutions, support services and rehabilitation interventions, rather than discuss specific protection products. Detailed recommendations are an outcome of an advice process and dependent on each individual’s circumstances.
Swiss Re’s recently released Insurance Report and research from 'The Syndicate' continues to flag consumer mistrust in our industry and the perception of low levels of claim payments. PPI remains an issue and the public don’t distinguish between different parts of the industry. The involvement of the insurance industry in the Seven Families initiative made some people suspicious. Which is precisely why we delivered the project devoid of any attempt to push insurance products. The publication of claims statistics is useful progress but we need to do more and highlight the ease of the claim process, speed of claim payment and the benefits of added value services such as RedArc and rehabilitation interventions. By highlighting these aspects and publicly supporting families with no strings attached, the project set out to demonstrate to consumers, the media and advisers the claims process and outcomes for real. And show how they could help real people.
The Seven Families project delivered more than its original objective, and it keeps on delivering.
The project continues to engage the industry on a number of key issues that we need to address:
- Vulnerable customers and improving treatment, support and outcomes – this issue has been the focus of Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Occasional Papers number 8 and more recently 17. All of the seven families taking part in the project can be categorised as vulnerable and the video case studies serve as useful training material for advisers, business leaders and all staff serving and supporting vulnerable customers. The FCA has also highlighted the value of working with charities and the project has broken new ground for our industry by working in collaboration with the charity sector in common cause.
- Inclusive diversity – we’ve a record number of women in the workplace, establishing and leading their own businesses, as the sole and main bread winner in their households. But this is not mirrored in insurance coverage, despite us now witnessing the most significant reform of working age welfare since Beveridge, having a disproportional impact on women. The Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) has recently launched its Women In Insurance programme to address this issue. By having diversity at its core, the Seven Families project supports this, with the personal stories of four women involved in the project in its video material.
- Working age welfare reform – all seven families in the project thought that they could rely on the welfare state but have found it difficult to understand their entitlement, problematic and impersonal to claim, and the replacement level of benefits relative to their former level of income was low. Benefits were also conditional and in a number of instances means-tested, subject to a waiting period, time-boxed and capped.
- House and home security – with a significant number of mortgages unprotected and a growing number of those renting lacking savings or an income replacement contingency strategy it is key that we discuss improving home occupancy resilience. Especially with the welfare benefits supporting those mortgaged, in shared ownership or renting being reformed,. The Seven Families material does this with a number of the families featured having faced or facing housing issues.
- Improving customer outcomes – whilst publishing claims statistics and monetary values is to be welcomed, the Seven Families project goes beyond this by bringing to life and showing the support and rehabilitation interventions that now form part of the care and claim services that can aid policyholders and their families.
- Improving adviser use of social / workplace media, real case studies, interactive tools and storytelling – the Seven Families collateral that advisers can freely use, plus the project’s use of social media, radio, TV and consumer press (print and online) both supports advisers and provides an example of what can be done. It’s pleasing to see that over the life span of the Seven Families project, the Intelliflo report shows that adviser usage of social media is up for the third year running, with 70% of advisers engaging with social media for business purposes. This is up from 58% in 2014 and 61% in 2015, and whilst we cannot attribute all of this to the project, Seven Families has played its part.
How do we build on Seven Families?
With the demise of the Money Advice Service and the ambition of the Financial Advice Markets Review (FAMR), it’s key that the industry debates how we collaborate and work in common cause with others, such as health charities. The aim is to improve consumer awareness of the benefits of improved financial resilience plus appropriate protection advice, propositions, support services and rehabilitation interventions. The good news is that recent improvement in income protection sales and coverage is in part being attributed to the Seven Families initiative and raising consumer awareness is high on the agenda of our professional, industry and trade bodies.
What could we do next?
- Run another Seven Families type initiative and perhaps focus on some additional family financial resilience issues beyond loss of income. For example, looking at long term care needs and the benefits of a Lasting Power of Attorney.
- Take learnings from www.lifehappens.org, a not-for-profit adviser support hub in the US. Look at the national, month long, life and critical illness, income protection and long term care consumer awareness and education that they run. Lifehappens.org’s branded social and worksite media material, tools and real video case studies are made available to advisers along with marketing consultancy if required.
- A combination of both – my personal preference.
To address the growing protection need in the UK and to protect Britain’s national and family prosperity, we need to work together to better engage consumers, clients and introducers through interactive storytelling, conversation and gamification, be it face-to-face, in the workplace or online. Because, life does happen and in many cases, with financial consequences for our families.