Are there big changes ahead for protection?

0:12Welcome to the latest Margin Notes podcast with me Simony Kuriyaku editor of FTadvisor. Today I am talking protection. Thankfully, not the sort of conversation you might have to have had with your 16-year-old son, though that day will come all too soon for me, I'm sure. No, this is about pure protection, its usefulness, its application, and how advisors should be including protection in their conversations with their clients and with the regulator. So for the purposes of this podcast, we will be following the old Methodist-style three-point sermon, where we'll tell you what we're talking about, then we'll talk about it, and then we'll remind you what we talked about.

0:53So we'll look first at Business Protection Week, which is coming up on the 23rd of February. Then we're going to move on to discussing the FCA's review of Pure Protection, and then we'll talk about targeted support. Joining me on this whistle-stop journey is Roy McLaughlin. He's a strategic consultant at Plan Money and a member of the Protection Distributors Group. Roy, welcome. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks very much for having me. Well, it's great. Talk to me first about Business Protection Week. What should advisors expect? Okay, so this is a week in a couple of weeks' time where we have got a combination of advisors, insurers and some industry experts.

1:30And really, it's a week of education. What we want to do is talk to people who maybe have done a little bit of it, you know, dip their toe in the proverbial water, are semi, you know, in that business all the time. but also we want to reach out to someone maybe of our wealth and mortgage and group cousins and just talk to them about why they should either get into it or potentially contemplate signposting. And the reason for this is that we think this is a vast area. If you look at the numbers, you know, I mean, there are 5 million businesses in the UK, but realistically, probably 2.5 to 3 million if we look at sort of auto enrollment figures.

2:04And most of them or high proliferation of them, of course, are very small. You know, certainly in the, I think 97 % of businesses are 10 people or less. But, you know, there is an argument saying the smaller the business, the bigger the need for business protection. And blatantly, there are just not enough IFAs out there or advisors to service, you know, those sorts of numbers. So it's about encouraging people to maybe contemplate getting into business protection. Absolutely. And I remember, you know, about three years ago, I wrote an article for the Financial Times about how more wealth managers are moving into the past.

2:38protection space thinking about income protection particularly or thinking about sort of wrapping up big sums of money for inheritance tax purposes wrapping them up in whole of life policies but I don't think many people have joined the business protection sort of movement yet but it is a really crucial aspect isn't it of of an entrepreneur's life you need to have. You make a valid point about wealth managers you know if you talk about the sort of clients they're talking about they're often owner managed businesses or people very high up in various businesses and a lot of those businesses will be small.

3:09So you're actually, the synergies are really obvious. You're talking to a person about their wealth, okay? It makes sense to then talk to them about, you know, protecting their wealth, which can be individual, but in this situation could be the wealth of their respective companies. I remember, you know, this sends me right back to about 15 or 16 years ago now, when I was with AXA, I was sitting as a silent observer in a room where they had a roadshow with about 20, 25 advisors. And the guy who was delivering the talk about business protection, he said, how many of you in the room talked to your clients about business protection?

3:48And about half of the hands went up. And these are financial advisors. And then he said, and how many of you have got business protection yourself? And all the hands went down except for one guy who was right at the front. And he sort of looked around at everyone else. And then he looked really confused because he was the only advisor who had business protection. So this is also something that advisors think about for themselves, right? Absolutely. I mean, yeah, most IFA's tend to be small businesses and, you know, they are heavily reliant on a very small number of people. So, you know, it's the cobblers and shoes analogy, but we need it for ourselves.

4:23But, you know, that also takes me on to succession planning. And many people in our industry, but in lots of our industries, are talking about succession planning. Now, I'm not sure you can have that conversation without talking about what happens to shareholdings if something bad were to happen, either in terms of dying or having a critical illness. And advisors have got a crucial part to play alongside, strangely, accountants and lawyers in terms of succession planning and the solutions that are available. So I think what it also does is gives us the opportunity to work with those two sister professions.

4:56And I think there's an open door there, by the way, in terms of succession planning. Why is that so important? Well, you know, governments of all size, shapes and colours are obsessed with growth at the moment. And, you know, you hear growth every four or five words, correct? Now, if hopefully we do get ourselves back into a semblance of a decent society and people start or encourage us out with the new businesses, the infancy of the business is a really important time as well. And I think being able to talk to people about key person and just general protection products. and you know we we also must be mindful of health and well-being which i guess thankfully most people are now talking about and again there's a there's a crucial role for business protection in health and well-being and subjects such as vocational rehabilitation etc etc yeah but you know mentioned key person cover and i was going to come on to that people forget that it's not just the chief executive that you need to be protecting a key person could be your key salesperson or if you've only got one salesperson it could be your salesperson or it could be your um chief revenue officer or it could be your office manager without whom nothing would ever get done you know whoever your key people are they may not always be the person who's founded the company absolutely and there's a misnomer here that sometimes it is literally just the person at the top and what a skilled IFA can do is go in and sit down with that company and help explore revenue streams if certain people will be off so what happens if the financial uh control is not here what happens if that person that's bringing in loads of sales isn't here etc etc and i think again that's a an example where we can work closely with accountants because they will see that from a different angle but obviously the solution of replacing that person in terms of revenue and cash flow is something that uh you know accountants will tell you they they need help from so so there's you know this and you know this is not this is not the easiest stuff in the world in terms until you're trained in it but once you're trained in it you'll find that the avenues and the opportunities open up you know uh you know all around you.

6:52Absolutely. So what are some of the topics that you guys will be talking about in Business Protection Week this year? Right. So it's a wide range. I mean, what we're trying to do is give people the opportunity. And I think the strand of the week is the opportunity that's out there. So some of the things I've mentioned in terms of the sheer numbers, there's some technical sessions on things like key person, shareholder protection, partnership protection. There are, you know, use of trusts. There are sessions on working with professional introducers because one of the things that some of us hear is that sometimes there's still a bit of them and us with some of the professional introducers and we've got some hopefully some top tips as to how people can go and approach local accountants uh solicitors banks etc and of course business protection inevitably goes over to the group side as well and you know there there are it would be it would be a little bit naive just to isolate business protection and not talk about some of the group protection um you know solutions so we're trying to make this part of the holistic um holistic solution and because there are some insurers there i would encourage people to come in and listen to the insurers and what everyone says about courses you know disemnity is what's the follow-up okay i've listened to disemnity it's been absolutely brilliant but what happens next so the great thing about this week is that all the sessions will have feedback forms and people are able to uh contact the insurer immediately and say i would like some more training on xyz so we want to be very proactive going forward as well yeah that sounds really good i was actually going to ask what kind of responses did you have last year and how has that then fed to sort of positive outcomes throughout 2025 i think the most interesting uh uh feedback you get is particularly some of the dipping their toe into business section who and i sense why there's a bit of nervousness you know i get it but you know six months afterwards they come up to a conference or or somewhere and just go best thing i ever did OK, and I think it's plunging into that proverbial pool, if I get this ridiculous analogy going.

8:47And actually, because of those doors that open, suddenly you get into it. And I think it's also, you know, we're all talking from day one of IFA training school, but explore your client box. OK, and I think that too many of us sitting natural silos where we just say, I'm just wealth, I'm just mortgage, I'm just group, whatever it is. OK, and forget that those clients have got lots of different needs across the piece. so I think what we've been able to do is is encourage people to do that and the one bit that we do hear a lot is people coming up to us after us and saying do you know what I now have a relationship with my local accountant with my local solicitor that I just didn't have before so I think that's a good thing as well so so you know the the result of this should be we encourage more people to to get into this but I'm just going to re-emphasize the signposting because I'm very aware that some people will listen to something like this and just go we haven't got the time resource or whatever it is to do it well my advice there would be to go and marry up with someone that does it okay and signpost your business to them and one of the one of the strange things about signposting and you know the pdg talks about this a lot is that after a few years often a person that's been signposted to says i'm actually going to go and do this to myself so we've got examples of people have signposted for a few years and then said actually there's a hell of a lot of business here let's set up a department and there's some great examples where that's happened yeah absolutely and just even if you think well I don't write that much business protection well you might not now but once you've partnered with solicitors and accountants and you started to work with them and built up that professional network you'll find yourself getting more referrals and that's a great way of getting business so and it's and there's one there's one other thing about business protection everyone tells you is that it sticks okay and what I mean by that is that obviously you know with certain uh certain protection products you know there is always the the problem that some of them come off the books after a period of time business protection has unbelievable stickability and it tends to be therefore very solid business that stays on the books and remember it's all very reviewable because there's very few businesses that you and i certainly know that stay at the same level okay businesses tend to evolve hopefully get bigger and therefore the view the reviewability of going back and saying you know your key person was this or your session planning plans for this.

11:01Oh, actually, you know, you've doubled your turnover. You've got some more partners in. Or suddenly, to your earlier point, there's someone that wasn't here two years ago who's now crucial to this business. That person should have key person. So I think the repeatability of the serviceability, which is what we should be doing anyway from a consumer duty point of view, is something that means that business protection, you know, is a great place to be. Yeah, absolutely. At the very least, getting business protection for your own advisory practice. Absolutely. Yeah, good stuff. Well, let's move on on that really important note, though.

11:33Let's move on to something else that's also very important and is hitting the headlines now. The FCA's pure protection review. You know, just like buses, you can wait ages for a piece of protection legislation and suddenly a massive swathe of consultations and review papers, they come along almost at once. And just if you haven't been reading FD Advisor or seeing this, the FCA just recently put out its interim findings of its competition review into the pure protection products. And it found that for those consumers that have taken out protection insurance, the market mostly works well. So that's really good news.

12:06There are a wide range of products. Most consumers can claim when they need to. Some very good claim stats out there. and the costs of cover have remained stable but there's a huge protection gap 50 percent 58 percent i think 58 yeah 58 that's huge 58 percent of adults in the uk do not hold a pure protection product so even though many can benefit from it they just don't they don't have it so the fca is really keen on closing this gap um but i think roy it might be worthwhile to i know many listeners might know this but some might not could you just explain what it means what the fca is talking about when it talks about pure protection products right okay so basically the protection gap is the most important thing to focus on so in in no particular order the three core products are life insurance income protection critical illness now interestingly the the industry sells uh more life insurance than it does second is critical illness and third is income protection although the propensity of one of those things to happen is the wrong way around we should be selling more income protection because you're more likely to be off long-term ill than you are to have a critical illness or to die okay but that's that's what they're talking about here and and the worrying thing about that stat and i think i think none of us were that surprised by it but the worrying thing is if you think about that six out of ten people are walking around without any form of protection insurance and things go wrong okay uh the stats on cancer the stats on what people being off work you know the stats on people dying etc etc are there this is just a fact of life okay um and i think it comes back a little bit to the serviceability of of not enough advisors talking about this but we we blatantly need to just think about it and the other curveball i will throw in and this is the fca's own stats are that 91 of people can't find a financial advisor so you've got this perfect storm too many people can't find us okay and too many people haven't got protection so this is something that we need to do about it and and you know whilst that shocked a lot of people in the industry it's good for ever so often for the fca for a regulator to come out and just put that because it became a headline yeah and it's a it's a very sort of key headline isn't it we know that roughly nine percent of the population in the uk has financial advice and we might say well given that there's about sort of the top 10 are probably the only ones that be able to afford full fat financial advice um that sounds about right but really what we're looking at is a whole swathe of people that don't have basic protection on their salaries and we're not asking the people to continue to pay for reviews.

14:40Once you have gone in, got your protection product, that's it. I've got protection. I've got protection products through work. I've got protection products, income protection separately as well with a lovely financial advisor. And I don't have to have regular six hour reviews. She doesn't have to fill in countless forms and look about my wealth and everything. I just contact her as and when, and it's very proactive and I I don't need to worry. But people don't think about this. They don't think, well, you know, actually, income protection should be for everyone. You know, whether you're earning 30 ,000 or 300 ,000, it doesn't matter.

15:18You have to protect the person that is making the savings, paying for the mortgage, paying the rent. This is it's very obvious, doesn't it? But it does. And the most important thing that you've said in that sentence, your perception, perception, as always, is workplace. place um let's have a look at the stats only eight percent of employers in the uk have group income protection but what me and lots of other advisors find is as we walk around you ask people if they have it at work and people go yeah we got it we got it okay so what we do is we're trained to to question that okay and really probe it and say okay i know you think you've got it could i have a look at your booklet of work now everybody has a pdf of the hr booklet okay and i think it's really important at IFA's you know question that and don't let people off there and push that because that means 92 % of people don't have it okay we move on to life assurance loads of people tell you they have deaf and service at work okay depending on what what you uh what you read it's between about 30 and 50 % of companies okay right but again the proliferation of smaller companies that have it is larger uh that don't have it is larger so again I think lots of people are mistakenly walking around thinking that they have it at work and I personally think it's the IFA's job to create the awareness to challenge that and ask people and help them and get that pdf and do it yourself and if we could take a leaf out the seven families book I know it's 10 years ago now but that was all about awareness really set really that long ago it was actually 11 it's actually 11 I got it but you know that that was about awareness and that was getting people to challenge that fact so you have to contextualize the amount of people who are walking around outside there who actually probably believe they have something and the second part okay and i mean this apolitically this is nothing to do with whoever's in charge is what they get back from the state okay and i believe so i don't believe i know because i hear this uh you know certainly on a weekly basis sometimes on a daily basis that people think they're going to get more back from the state than they actually are and they don't understand things like means testing and the fact that um for example with things like universal credit it they'd look at your savings and if you've got someone else in your household that's got a job and savings you're affected so i think part of the advisor's job whether we like it or not and i'm talking about across all advisors not just protection wealth mortgage group is to is to educate people and help them research what happens when these horrible things happen to them and do they actually have the cover they think that they've got of course and one of the questions you know i had for wealth managers and I've always had these questions for them it's like why do you not have an income protection conversation with your clients and they said well we focus on the investments and the pension strategy I said yes but that investment strategy and the pension strategy comes from someone being able to work and generate an income in order to pay into their ISAs or to pay into their pension what happens when that person suddenly becomes unable to work what happens to your pension strategy what happens to your investment strategy all that's going to go out the window because they're going to struggle to kind of keep their roof over there and their family's head.

18:22Absolutely so people talking that example of self-insurance and self-insurance is really dangerous okay firstly to your point you're building up your pensions and your ISAs and everything while you're working but sometimes if you stop working and no one's paying you that income you can't pay into those things secondly obviously sometimes you have to then rely on those things to look after so you're breaking in probably at exactly the wrong time to those things but here's your perfect storm okay um what happens if at the same time that you're off ill there's a stock market crash okay and obviously your wealth advisors go no no no don't don't go in and take money out of your iso now or or whatever they've set up so i think you know we have to uh talk to wealth advisors about protecting the wealth insuring the wealth whatever terminology you want to use and and there's something strangely on the horizon that that may help this which is the change with pensions and inheritance tax next next april because obviously after next April just to remind your listeners um pensions are going to fall back into the IHT regime um and therefore wealth managers uh you know are going to have to consider this and there is a solution to effectively ensure your pension and I would I would encourage people to uh to explore that yes and we've got lots of CPD on FT Advisor about that so just do a quick search we've got loads of CPD on sort of wrapping things up within trust or wrapping up stuff within whole of life.

19:44So it can be done. It can be done. It's also just to go on about lawyers and accountants again, it's also a great way of dealing with professional connections because whilst ensuring your pension is great, it should be done in the context of other inheritance tax mitigation. And that's where working with those both professions can help you as well. And we've seen that firsthand. So don't just think this is a life insurance solution, think this is an IHT solution and talk to our cousins in both those professions. Great. Well, these are really good ways, a good sort of nudge to kind of help close that protection gap in the UK.

20:21But in terms of the actual products that are on offer, the FCA said that there's generally a very good range of products and that generally it's not concerned about claims because claims statistics are usually quite good um all in a 90 yeah exactly and those who are within the 10 or whatever who have had their claims declined they would sort of argue against that and sometimes quite rightly but generally 90 plus is very very good for an uphold rate so in some ways it could be said that the market's working well but there are some elements that aren't quite working well aren't there now yes now you know you're sort of laughing because you know i'm going to say to you roy you told me that i can't ask you about loaded premiums because you're not sure if your views on them are suitable for listeners but why can't i ask you i knew i knew you wouldn't i knew you okay so so so let me let me put it a different way okay if loaded premiums which are apparently 26 % of sales are explained coherently and clearly to clients, okay?

21:29I can see that I get that there is a potential, with a small p, potential arena for them, okay? Our problem, and this is talking about the PDG, et cetera, is that our experience is that lots of people have loaded premium contracts and don't know that they've got them okay and it's a bit like walking down a high street and choosing to buy the same product in two different shops um and knowing that shop a is more expensive than shop b that's your choice yeah so you buy your um uh i'm gonna guess you're a you're a um a drinker of of rose simile so i don't drink any alcohol but yes for the oh okay right okay I'll be a rosé girl.

22:14Okay, so let's say the rosé that – I should have chatted that before, shouldn't I? The rosé you buy in Waitrose is blatantly more expensive than rosé you buy in Lidl, okay? But you're making that choice. You're walking in. You know that before you walk in. Let's take that across to Loader Premiums. The people with Loader Premiums really understand that they've got an extra price to pay, okay? If that's explained coherently and clearly, okay, I guess there is an argument, okay? I'm not saying I agree with it, but I guess there's an argument for that. But there is evidence that, firstly, the consumers don't know that, but maybe not all people selling that product know that.

22:52And that's what worries us at the PDG. So we're just asking for opency and clarity. And I think that we were all shocked that it was 26 % of sales. And the FCA have only said this is going to be looked at. It hasn't been decided yet. But I think it's a debate we really need to have. And it's something we need to be very careful of, because to your point, most of this review is very positive and we're in a good place. OK. And, you know, claims rates are we all know they're in the 90s. That's great. They made a point about churning, which is their their word. Nobody likes that expression. But but, you know, churning is blatantly very, very minor in a great scheme of things.

23:36OK, obviously, we've got the protection gap. But I think, you know, we need to focus on the positives of this and explaining to people the difference between one rate and another. For me, it's quite an obvious thing we need to be doing. Yeah. So is that a diplomatic enough answer? That's a diplomatic enough answer. But I wouldn't be a good journalist if I wasn't challenging you on it. And I'm going to challenge you on it by saying if someone chooses to walk into waitrose for the rosé that they've got on their shelves, you're paying more with the expectation that you're getting something a little bit better.

24:09You're getting better quality. And if you're going to Lidl, you know, you're just getting something cheap to have with your fish and chips. At the end of the day, you're not necessarily bothered about quality. um it applies to loaded premiums if i am fully aware that i'm paying higher premiums and or that my premium has been loaded then i would expect something higher quality or something more for the price i'm paying okay our consumers getting more for the price they're paying so this is important okay the uh rosette i'm talking about is the same brand right okay there's no difference in brand let's call it whispering angel okay because i happen to like Whispering Angel.

24:43They're buying Whispering Angel in both shops. They're just paying more for it, okay? The argument for paying more for it is that companies say that we are putting more policies into trust and we're using the extra commissions we're getting to help people, to help our advisors in terms of marketing more income protection, okay? I guess the PDG's view straight away back would be, shouldn't we be putting the majority of policies into trust? And you might laugh at this, but having income protection in my blood, it starts my conversations. It's not at the end of it. So I have a right smile when I sometimes hear some of the arguments for where that extra commission goes.

25:24But, you know, that's a view of someone that thinks that we should be doing a comprehensive piece of advice with every protection customer. Yes, well, exactly. And protection conversations should be taking as long as they need to and not being constricted to a 20 minute or 15 minute phone call with someone as well. I think the FCA sort of said sometimes the way in which they're sold, not all consumers understand exactly what they're getting. That's quite likely the fault of whoever's talking. And that's so true. I think the one that most advisors again have a right smile on is people that think they've got critical illness and they've got private medical insurance okay and I think that is something that's just been rushed done too quickly maybe some advisory firms that quite rightly aren't here anymore but I think let's go back to our 60 percent within that that 40 percent people that have policies I fear that there are some of them that are walking around with something that they think is x but it's actually y and again this comes back to the serviceability because the first thing that decent advisors ask is have you got any protection yes can i have a look at it can i just check it out for you and i think we always have to remember don't don't almost let the consumer off the hook who says i've got this already push that a little bit in a responsible way and just say that's great i'll check this out for you but that that happens more often than you you think and it often happens at the point of a mortgage which is where a lot of people are sort of signing away you know signing on a life assurance form and i remember having my mortgage application when i was um my husband and i both work at the ft so we both are covered by the death and service and they have very good um income protection cover as well it's not completely comprehensive we can go into that another time um and they have pmi um so the we just told the it's not the current mortgage advisor but the first one and they just kind of ticked it off yeah okay you've got that you've got that but they didn't challenge us on it um because i was waiting to sort of dive in and say yes our debt and service is 14 times which you're not going to get anywhere else 14 times debt and service so i can never leave the ft um but they didn't challenge it they didn't ask what what sort of income protection policy are you going to be paid up full salary how long for is it six months two months yeah you know they so they didn't kind of go into this conversation around it um had they done so we'd have had to show them so well actually after 12 months it's then 50 percent of salary or uh actually the pmi will only work if we are sort of in full-time employment and not kind of drawing on it so it kind of there there are different things that they didn't challenge us on they just it's a brilliant example where we and it's our problem not the consumer's problem we have to push that and we have to say and you know what it's easy to my previous point everyone has a pdf from their hr department now okay right and and you can just say could i have a look at that strangely there's a byproduct of that sometimes it gets you into corporate advice because the hr people are going who's this advisor that's asking about this sort of stuff but that's just a a nice uh nice nice addition but i think we have to push people and you're absolutely right i mean i know some very enlightened mortgage brokers that uh won't allow na on forms anymore and na is the big danger here.

28:49And it tended to be because the protection questions often were right at the end of the fact find and you're on page 78 and you've given up the wheel to live and it was too easy to write NA on them. So I know there's been some repositioning and I think that's a good thing of when you actually ask these questions. I actually think that should be more towards the start of that fact finder process. But don't let the customer off, if that makes sense, with just telling you they got something without challenging it. that I think is is is part of what a responsible advisor should be doing and do you know what I think consumers actually appreciate that uh yeah so uh so but that but your story is is probably uh a bit too more common than we'd like oh how dare you is that calling me common no no but it's it's true and the thing is you know obviously my husband and I both understand finance you know that we understand the basics of it um at least but many people don't understand and they wouldn't know to ask or they wouldn't know to challenge their advisor well i'll tell you another one that i've done literally hundreds and hundreds of times is when people say i've got sick at work okay and i always ask them to get me the contract of employment and 99 times out of 100 underneath that it says the fatal line at the employer's discretion okay and i think everybody listening to this call knows what at the employer's discretion means um and even more worries when sometimes people say um yeah but so-and-so was off and they looked after them for for a little bit longer than i thought okay well again that should be teaching you something okay so i think you have to challenge these things because it's just too dangerous also none of us wants a call from that client a year later two years later saying do you know what after two months i got rid of me okay maybe i should have pushed this question a bit more maybe we should have checked it i mean again i think that's sort of our responsibility yeah yeah so i guess the fca is right we did need a review into the pure protection market and certainly hopefully we can close that protection gap and just a reminder to listeners responses are due in by the 31st of march um and you can find all the information on the fca's website or obviously on ft advisor and then finally targeted support roy i know this is one of your favorite subjects as regular readers of ft advisor will know and you've been urging the industry to respond really positively to proposals from the fca to include protection in targeted support why okay uh we've been talking about it for the last 20 minutes inadvertently um 91 of people and these are fca figures okay it's not stuff that you and i are making up 91 of the people can't find our profession okay for reasons that are sometimes valid okay right but personally i think with my altruistic hat on that's that's sad and and wrong okay and my evidence is um i think that you know certain advisors who cut their teeth 20 30 years ago basically took on a lot more clients than people that would do now now there were some problems with that okay but let's just think about that journey we were meeting people often at the start of their careers okay and doing their first iso i'm going to date myself and say first pep or doing their first pension or doing a little bit of basic protection.

31:59And that was great. And those people have broadly grown with you and have become, you know, hopefully successful and have kept that journey with the advisor. Let's now go back to those 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds, you know, because that 91 % tend to be younger people, okay, because that's just definition of having money. They have almost been forgotten when it comes to any form of, and I'm going to use this word liberally, financial advice, okay? Because I know there's guidance, there's advice and there's semantics in there, but let's call it for the moment advice, okay? It was music to, I think, all of our ears when we heard that the FCA, I think it's six months ago now, said targeted support was going to come on.

32:41And Rachel Reeves talks about it a lot, to be fair. And she mentioned, or they mentioned, that this would be to do with pensions and to do with savings. So we were, great, brilliant. This is going to solve that problem. Those people that want their first£1 ,000 ISA or£50 a month pension or£30 a month protection, they will now be able to do this. And you're reading this document, and you know that we read this in conjunction with a few like yourself time and time again. And you were turning over the page going, well, where's the last bit? Because it was savings, it was pensions, and there was no last bit.

33:16OK, and the bit that was missing was protection. OK, and I know there are many of us in the industry that just couldn't understand that, particularly the holistic people that had been brought up doing this. OK, so thanks to stakeholders and the FCA have called the stakeholders, and that includes journalists and some people in the industry. the most welcome piece of news for me in the fca review last week was that they are going to consider um i'm not quite sure what what consider means but they were going to consider bringing protection into targeted support and that for me of all the things we've been talking about is the most welcome and the reason is really obvious for me okay let's let's let's meet that 25 year old let's meet that 30 year old who's doing their first isa and they're doing their first pension okay um and remember this includes self-employed who don't have the who don't have auto-enrollment as a as a thing to do um i think that person to not have protection in that conversation is very very dangerous okay because at some point in their lives they're going to need it okay and they're certainly going to need to talk about things like income protection um unless they're lucky enough to have it by work and we've already made that point that only eight percent of people have it so it just seemed very strange it's been ignored now it appears that that door is open okay and I think we the stakeholders need to go back and very much encourage the fact that holistic financial advice is savings pensions and protection as the underpin of pretty much every piece of advice that there is so my hope our hope is that this does come in in some form I know they've said that there are some regulatory issues around it well of course there there always is when's there not a sentence with regulatory issues at the end but that's not the point I I think if those of us can come together and just think about particularly, you know, people starting off or younger that can't find the financial advisor.

35:08OK, how do they how do they have protection underpinning these things? So actually, I think if that happens, that strangely is the most dramatic thing that's happened probably since the RDR. And I don't, you know, I'm not exaggerating that comment. Well, that's the headline. This could be the most exciting thing since RDR. But I was actually going to ask about RDR because it was the banks largely who ditched hundreds of thousands of their sales people and their frontline staff ahead of RDR because they said, we no longer want to be involved with financial advice. it's going to be too expensive we're not going to compete so they ditched a lot of their front facing staff took advice out of branches closed down branches uh so in a way i like to blame the banks it's the bank's fault um for helping to exacerbate the um it wasn't just the banks though let's let's let's just the banks there were other there were big financial advice firms also that said we're only going to operate for 350k and yeah and a lot of people left the industry yeah so yes so you know the number of advisors is dramatic i think we're down into the early 20 thousands you know i think i'm right in saying it was it was sort of four or five times that amount at its peak yes it has gone up it has gone up thanks largely to a lot of advice academies being set up and to the accrediting bodies all of them who have done a sterling work in an outreach and in trying to get more people into the industry.

36:44So they need to be commended for that. And it has been creeping up. But if the FCA listens, it does include it in targeted support. Given the people that we know, or given the companies that we know are already looking to do targeted support, which are mostly the banks. Ironically. Exactly. Plus, they change. Plus, they're the même chose. us um are we then looking at a situation where we're going to have basic investment sort of targeted support basic savings targeted support and basic protection which would be all the bank's in-house products no whole of market advice no sort of looking around to find the very best thing for these people it's just basically going to be like a bit of a sales push and products is that actually doing the right thing in terms of protection or is it still better than nothing right great challenge uh firstly better than nothing second it's a roadmap okay i think and we've got more responsibility than we had previously i think as long as the people that are involved in target support have a great big neon green sign pointing out the fact that you then move up to a different type of advice at a certain point it could be a certain uh some assured it could be a certain uh fund under management it could be it could be a certain different type of tax instrument as long as that's happening then i think we're definitely moving in the right direction the serviceability that you just mentioned is key okay uh whatever it is 20 25 of 30 000 it sort of doesn't matter that's not enough advisors okay i know there's an office joke here but that isn't enough advisors we need to encourage more into the industry okay because it's a great industry to be in i think if we were sitting here with the numbers of of lawyers and accountants that I think I believe is 200 and 400 ,000, we wouldn't have this problem.

38:34Okay. But we need to, we need to therefore think about where we are. And I still take that back to it. It might not be perfect, Tox is poor, but it's better than where we were, which is too many people of my daughter's age who can't find financial advice. Okay. And the second thing is just that as long as there is that education roadmap about, you know, you then need to move up to a different type of advice okay who cares so so this is financial advice light okay right but it doesn't really matter to me i think that you know it's it reminds me a little bit of cash plans and pmi you know cash plans are much more affordable for lots and lots of companies and they are a pmi light but lots of people have started off and that's where that journey's occurred lots of people doing income protection at very very small uh um um payout periods at the moment okay who cares again that you've started on that okay you mentioned 14 times deaf and service i've encouraged some clients to do one times deaf and service just because they've started off and then what they do is they progress over a period of time so rather than the uh we all love a one one uh one hat fits all uh solution let's look at this as a uh target support is is hopefully something that's going to evolve and i think that i get why lots of advisory firms are saying maybe not for us but actually i think where they could help in the journey in the roadmap is to say at what point should that come over and this is all about the educational piece as well and i think we need to get more influencers people like yourself similarly okay we need to get more educators in the industry um because the one thing that and i go around and do a lot of group presentations okay as you know the one thing that's said to me on most group presentations i do is i was listening to martin lewis okay and he was absolutely brilliant okay but after his two or three minutes i didn't know what to do next it's it's almost as if that's fantastic but where do we go next and i think as an industry take take that message that could be the target support thing then what happens next and i think we just need to now there's there's there's another great uh light on the end of the tunnel which is if i can quickly mention uh charlie mayfield's report i knew you're going to come on to mayfield because i know you're so positive about this This is Roy Bingo, isn't it?

40:47But it's the same message. The message from that report, if it comes through, is that early intervention services are crucial to getting people back to work and keeping people in work. Let's face it, I know the government are never going to say income protection. We're not naive, but early intervention and vocational rehabilitation is all about income protection. So strangely, you've got this other report coming alongside targeted support. there's also basically advocating uh advice okay all right they're not not going to say it out but but it basically is so we've suddenly in this very unusual i mean for you and i we we certainly not had a couple of government reports that effectively are are advocating our industry but that's why we need to seize the day and just make the most of this um so i think uh i'm i'm very glass half full my my whispering angel is very half full at the moment the whispering angel You know, not being a drinker, I had no idea that there was a rosé called Whispering Angel.

41:43And to have you say that your Whispering Angel is half full is just, you know, it's too much for a podcast, even for margin notes. But there you have it. Business Protection Week, the FCA's Pure Protection Review and the importance of bringing protection into the scope of targeted support. That's plenty to think about. and Mayfield of course the benefits amends we can keep Britain working just for the purposes of CPD this will qualify for CPD so you should at the end of this now be able to list the various reasons why business protection is so important for you and your clients to be able to summarize some of the elements of the FCA's pure protection review and to be able to list ways that you can sort of benefit from bringing protection into the scope of targeted support so again plenty to think about that right thank you so much for talking to fd advisor thank you very much it's been my pleasure i'm going to go away and have some non-alcoholic drink you go away and finish the rest of your whispering angel but which shop do i buy it from that's the key don't even don't go back there don't go back loaded premiums no no no seriously Thank you so much for talking to us.

43:03Thank you very much. It's been my pleasure. And thank you again for listening. Until next time, take care.