Ask first! The trouble with life offices

Upside down and back to front – Kevin Carr, CEO of Protection Review, wonders why some providers get it so wrong when launching a new product…

Hands up if you’ve ever listened to a new launch from a life office and thought to yourself: “I really wish they’d talked this through with me first.”

I know I have, more times than I care to remember, and I hope many of you have too.

You see, in my experience, providers are very good (in fact sometimes brilliant) at building things without any external assistance whatsoever. Yes, they’ll claim to carry out IFA research from time to time, but often it’s too little too late and more of a tick-box exercise, as opposed to proper IFA feedback on the detail and overall ethos of the proposition.

More importantly, it is often carried out just prior to launch, or in some cases post-launch, which again is just a bit pointless because it’s probably too late (and too expensive) to change anything. And someone’s job might occasionally be on the line, so who wants to be told they’ve got it wrong, eh?

I should stress that I’m certainly not referring to one single office or one single market, nor would I apply this to every office in the UK. Some get it, others don’t. However, it is a view I and many others have held for many years about a range of companies where the outward-in ‘we know best’ attitude can be quite dangerous at times.

In an ideal world, intermediary and external expert feedback should be sought from day one. Saying to the industry: “This is what we’re thinking of doing and this is how we might do it, what do you think?” is so much better than “This is what we’ve done, isn’t it great!”

In the interests of balance, it must be said that there’s a flip-side here too, because one of the reasons life offices might not rush to carry out IFA research from day one, is because if you ask ten IFAs the same question you’ll often get nine different answers. Also, every now and then, a provider builds exactly what the IFAs have asked for, but they still don’t sell it.

The PR aspect can be particularly important as well. It’s not difficult to understand the benefits of bringing media commentators into the loop as early as possible – I’d certainly rather know if my great new product is going to be criticised six weeks before launch (and in private) than the week after launch in the press.

So my message to life offices is: Build a list of knowledgeable and trusted key influencers and consult them as early as possible in whatever you do. It might cost a little and it might take a little time, but that will be tiny in comparison to the potential brand damage and lack of new business that just might happen otherwise.

Kevin Carr is managing director of Kevin Carr Consulting and chief executive of Protection Review. www.kevincarrconsulting.co.uk