The stamp duty holiday protection opportunity

The mortgage market, like many, was hit by Covid-19. The new-purchase market ground to a halt when valuation and estate agency services were suspended due to lockdown and social distancing measures. Mortgage protection sales dropped by 23%¹.

But we’re over the initial shock and the market is starting to recover, helped by the stamp duty holiday. Implemented to boost the housebuilding and mortgage markets, and available until the end of March 2021 on all purchases under £500k, it seems to be working. In fact, July saw the highest number of monthly sales in 10 years².

In a recent survey, 75% of advisers told us their clients were more willing to talk about protection as a result of Covid-19³. This change in attitude, alongside significant savings for house buyers, makes it the perfect time to have the protection conversation.

This change in attitude, alongside
significant savings for house buyers,
makes it the perfect time to have the
protection conversation.

Cost has always been one of the biggest customer objections to buying protection, so the stamp duty holiday represents a big opportunity for you to make sure your clients have the protection they need.

Let’s look at an example of that. Alex and Magda are upsizing to make more space for their teenage twins. They’re buying a house for £475k, with a mortgage of £325k. Decreasing life cover, with our dual life approach, for their mortgage costs £30.22 a month over 20 years⁴ – a total of £7,252.80 over the term of their policy. They’ve saved £13,750 with the stamp duty holiday⁵. So, you can quickly see the ‘I can’t afford it’ objection becomes much easier to overcome.

Now you’ve opened the door to the protection conversation, our proposition can really help you stand out. Firstly, our dual life approach means both Alex and Madga have their own separate cover with the potential for 2 payouts. So, for £30.22 a month, they have a total of £650k of life cover. Because they’ve applied together, we apply a multi-life discount. Our dual life approach means they have double the cover and in-built flexibility for the future – if one partner dies the other isn’t left unprotected. Or if they divorce, both can keep their cover in place.

That’s not all. Our market-leading terminal illness definition pays out for incurable stage 4 cancer, motor neurone disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or Parkinson-plus syndromes regardless of life expectancy. And our optional Children’s Critical Illness Protection can be added to any adult core cover – including stand-alone Life Protection. So even though Alex and Madga have decided not to buy critical illness cover for themselves at the moment, they still have the option to cover their twins until they turn 23, for an extra cost. Then they can remove the cover when they no longer need it.

And the best part of all this is, we’re 100% behind advice, so clients can only access our quality proposition if they come to you. They won’t find us on comparison sites. 94% of advisers told us our advice-only approach was important or very important³.

There’s plenty more that makes our Life Protection position stand out, which is why we were recently awarded gold across the board by Protection Guru. For an independent review of our Life Protection, visit https://protectionguru.co.uk/2020/07/15/guardian-life-protection-showcase-page

For more information on how Guardian do things differently visit whateveryadviserneedstoknow.com or speak to your Account Manager.

Source

1. moneymarketing.co.uk, IFAs see protection sales decline in Covid crisis, 4 August 2020.
2. Rightmove, Housing market sees busiest month for over ten years, 17 August 2020.
3. Guardian survey powered by Survey Monkey of 421 advisers, from 14 April to 30 June 2020.
4. Guardian quote on IRESS, £475k decreasing life cover, ages 45 and 40, 20 years, 9 July 2020.
5. This example is based on stamp duty holiday for England and Northern Ireland.