I do believe, with the great gift of hindsight, that we were all better protected when there were four times as many financial advisers, and most of those were actually life insurance salesmen. Now I’d say less than half of those who should have life, critical illness and income protection cover have any any sort of policy. And that is largely because we remaining advisers are keen to talk to those who already have money, not those, probably strapped and with young families and mortgages, who actually need other types of help, and are unlikely to get around to sorting it out themselves on the internet. Even if some bloke on YouTube (maybe me?) tells them they should. M&G, what used to be the Pru, are recruiting advisers again, having previously sacked them all. But you can bet they won’t be knocking on doors flogging policies.
“Zombie life insurer Phoenix to buy Standard Life Aberdeen insurance arm in £3.2bn deal”
There’s not much to choose between many of the biggest life and pensions companies. Most have some decent funds and have to compete on charges and product features. So service and relationships are often the deciding factor, and Standard Life’s admin and people have...