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Talking Protection - Think Marathon Not Sprint

By Jo Wilkie | Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

What is the difference between a house and a home? A house is a building, bricks and mortar, an empty, inanimate object. A home has a soul. It is a place that feels safe and welcoming. It’s filled with emotions, memories and connections. It is easy to forget a house; a home stays with you forever.

A home is a foundation from which you can build your life. It binds families together, providing vital security and stability from which to prosper. When you think of a home in these terms, it makes perfect sense to protect it. This thought should be front of mind, so why is it so often an afterthought?

In the latest AMI Protection Viewpoint report, only 39% of respondents recalled their broker asking about protection insurance, but 99% of brokers said they asked their clients about it¹ . This represents an enormous disconnect. Why is there such a chasm between what consumers and advisers remember?

These results indicate the protection conversation happens as an afterthought, tacked on to the end of the discussion, part of a tick box exercise. There is a tendency for advisers to concentrate on the bricks and mortar part, helping people with the finances to buy a house. There is far too little discussion about the emotion attached with that move, what that home will mean and why it is so important to protect it.

This lack of consumer recall means that protection is ignored or forgotten, with too many people not having the cover they need to be financially resilient in the face of the mishaps and misfortunes that are part of daily life. To change this, we need to talk about homes and what they mean.

Let’s face it, conversations that centre around hard facts and numbers can feel sterile, cold and a little dull. Over a third of UK adults say they find understanding financial documents hard² . Moving the discussions away from figures and focusing on feelings will not only make it easier for people to engage with the topic, but it will also make those conversations feel far more relevant and memorable.

Stories are what people connect with. They need to know how protection works in practice. Real world examples go beyond the figures, showing how ordinary people have benefited from safeguarding the things that matter most to them.

Protection is not an impulse purchase. People need time and space to digest what it covers, how it works and if it is right for them. In all likelihood they will have questions and will want to know more information, before going further. One conversation is unlikely to be enough. It needs to be part of an ongoing dialogue.

While AI can help with some of these questions, providing useful background information, it needs to work alongside face-to-face contact, not replace it. People need that personal connection to have complete confidence that they are buying the right policy to protect them and the things they love.

If the protection gap is to be closed, the conversation needs to happen from the start and be an integral part of the process. Thinking about how to stay in a home needs to be given the same level of importance as how to purchase that home in the first place. This conversation needs to be based on real world experiences and tap into the emotions that relate to the home. It is thinking about these feelings that will convince more people to take steps to protect it.