Large numbers of financial advisers in the later stages of evolution started their careers as men from the Pru, Pearl or Allied Dunbar, selling life insurance to the masses. We’re now, of course, very sophisticated investment and pensions advisers and often, alas, forget the basics of our basic training. If you have kids and a mortgage, you should have life insurance, and probably critical illness insurance and income protection too. We used to ask the basic questions without fear or prejudice: ‘If you died tomorrow, how would Mike/Michelle and the family manage? How much income would they need to keep the show on the road? Where would it come from?’ Most people, at some stage in their lives, need life insurance. It’s not a luxury and should be one of the last, not first, things to be cancelled when times get hard. Which, at some time, they always will.
“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...