James is a Senior Development Underwriter for the Protection Platform and has been with the company since 2016. He has close to 30 years' experience in the Protection industry and has worked in underwriting for over 20 years.
Why is there a growing need to improve medical questionnaires in the Protection insurance industry?
It’s important that questions are clear, easy to understand, appropriate for the disclosures made, and free from technical jargon or medical terms that are hard to pronounce. This approach helps build trust and transparency between insurers and their customers, empowering customers with confidence when completing the questions. In turn, insurers can trust they're capturing the right information for accurate risk assessment, leading to fairer underwriting decisions and a better service for their customers. Straightforward questions also benefit protection advisers who can provide better guidance and minimise the need to explain complex terms or rephrase questions, hence saving time and improving efficiency.
What is a common pain point advisers and customers face with traditional medical questionnaires?
Traditional questionnaires are often lengthy, complex and written in a robotic tone that lacks empathy. This results in a poor experience for both advisers and customers, causing confusion, frustration, and potentially resulting in incomplete and inaccurate disclosures.
Can the complexity of questions impact a customer’s willingness to purchase protection insurance?
Potentially, yes. Complex questions can be difficult to understand and answer and may prove to be a blocker for a customer fully completing an application.
If a customer isn't sure they've understood the questions, they might worry their answers won't be accurate. In this case, they may opt not to purchase protection, fearing that inaccurate disclosures could impact any future claim.
What’s unique about the Protection Platform’s questions, and how does it contribute to better customer outcomes?
Our Protection Platform streamlines the application process with a single question set used by all our partner insurers, giving access to multiple products through one simple journey.
Our questions capture the appropriate information for accurate multi-product risk assessment, offering underwriting decisions from our panel of insurers, and a better service for our customers.
Each insurer's premium is fully underwritten and in real time. Customers can easily compare all insurer decisions and their premiums, before buying the products that best fit their needs.
We work in close collaboration with our insurer partners and are continually striving to deliver the best customer journey with questions that are conversational in tone, simple and easy to understand, and empathetic.