New signposting Agreement on access to protection insurance

The Agreement was announced at the launch of the trade body's 2020 Manifesto in the Houses of Parliament. This is an Access To Insurance Working Group activity led by BIBA who chair the Signposting Workstream of the Access Group.

Under the Agreement, participants pledged to improve access to protection for those with disabilities or medical conditions by signposting consumers they can't serve to specialist advisers and providers who can assist them.

The resulting work stream deliverables are:

1. Create a new protection insurance central signposting solution
2. Cross sector agreement on definition of a specialist
3. Promotion of a new signposting service from key stakeholders (MAPS, Charities, CII. Regulated firms, the FCA)
4. Educational material

The trade bodies and professional bodies participating in this Agreement, who will actively encourage their respective memberships to support the ethos and approach of this Agreement, include the following:

• Access to Protection Insurance Group (API)
• The Association of Financial Mutuals
• The Association of Mortgage Intermediaries (AMI)
• British Insurance Brokers’ Association (BIBA)
• Chartered Insurance Institute (CII)
• Income Protection Task Force
• Association of Medical Insurance Intermediaries (AMII)
• Protect Association Protection Distributors Group (PDG)
• Protection Review Society of Later Life Advisers (SOLLA)
• The Insurance Supper Club
• UK Active

The role of the parties to this Agreement is to assist in ensuring ease of access for such people. In response to the agreement, Sian Fisher, CEO of the CII, said:

"I support this agreement's aim of setting up an effective signposting system to specialist providers and improving access to insurance for consumers. Seeking to improve access to protection products, especially for people with disabilities and long term illnesses, is not just a social good but ethical and professional behaviour.

At the CII, equality, diversity and inclusion is at the heart of our work to modernise perceptions of insurance and drive confidence in the power of professional standards. We believe this work by BIBA accurately reflects the shared belief of these goals across the profession."

The Equality Act 2010 does not prohibit insurers from using medical conditions as rating factors for protection insurance, but it recognises that customers with pre-existing medical conditions and/or disabilities do not always know how to find and obtain cover.

Under this Agreement insurers or intermediaries will, when they are unable to assist a prospective customer because of their pre-existing medical condition and/or disability, refer them to a suitable specialist firm that should be able to offer protection insurance in such cases, or to a recognised signposting service.

In all cases the following criteria should be satisfied:

• The customer should be clearly informed that a product is not available through the referring business because of their pre-existing medical condition and/or disability
• The customer should be clearly informed that cover for people with that or a similar condition may be available through referral to another suitable firm or to a signposting service
• Contact details of the partner or signposting service should be clearly stated
• Permission should be sought and granted before customer details are transferred to a third party

Companies wishing to refer customers to another firm may adopt one of the approaches below:

• Referring customers to another firm through a contractual or non-contractual arrangement with a firm who would be willing to offer protection insurance to people with that pre-existing medical condition and/or disability
• Signposting customers to another firm through a service that holds information about one or more firms who would be willing to offer protection insurance to people with medical conditions and/or disabilities
• The British Insurance Brokers’ Association’s (BIBA) Find-Insurance helpline and website services are recognised for the purposes of this Agreement as providing a suitable signposting service.
• This Agreement allows for any regulated entity that is unable to identify a suitable firm to signpost to the BIBA signposting service

Click here to read the full details of the Agreement