Protection

With the squeeze on costs that the Sandler world has bought to the financial services industry, technology provides a necessary opportunity that is shaping the protection market, Keily Poole from Friends Provident finds out how:

Another 950 positions are going from Norwich Union after the latest announcement of compulsory redundancies and outsourced IT projects was announced today.

The UK's singles population represents a potentially huge business opportunity for IFAs struggling with depolarisation as most have not bothered to sort themselves out with relevant illness or income protection, says Zurich Financial Services.

Only one in three people in the UK say they trust financial advisers the most when seeking financial advice, reveals a study by LifeSearch.

Most financial advisers cannot be trusted to sell the right protection products along with mortgages says the CA today following a year-long undercover investigation.

focus: private healthcare

Advisers active in the long term care insurance market will be required to take "appropriate" examinations within two years of the introduction of new rules active 31 October this year, the FSA says.

Protection specialist Bright Grey will today be kicking off its roadshows in a bid to teach IFAs about the opportunities available in the protection market.

The Association of British Insurers has called for help from IFAs, consumers, claims assessors and the Financial Ombudsman Service to create a new "user-friendly" reference guide of medical definitions for critical illness policies.

A new type of mortgage-linked critical illness policy could be designed to tackle the growing number of CI claims, which offers a smaller payout in the early stages of treatment and is linked to the severity of an individual's illness.