Gender and Income Protection

Hi everyone, we have Jo Elphick from Legal & General joining me and Roy McLoughlin in this episode. Legal & General have been looking at how gender influences the way that people engage with group income protection insurance. The statistics are quite interesting!65% of women surveyed believe that income protection is relevant to them, versus only 35% of men that felt it is worthwhileAs we talk through the findings, Jo helps us to understand the way that women tend to see the value of income protection more than men, yet less women than men take up and engage with this policy type. We talk about how women traditionally tend to address health concerns early on, in contrast to their ‘invincible’ male counterparts, which means we really should be shouting from the rooftops about how group support services can help them and their immediate family.The key takeaways:Some reasons for people not engaging with group income protection include not understanding what the policy is, their partner’s sorting out all the finance stuff, and fear that employers might learn too much about their health.Messages about group insurance support services are not often filtered to employees well, being lost amongst all the noise of employment contracts and onboarding procedures.Storytelling that demonstrates the benefits of engaging with group support services, is where we can show how income protection isn't’ just about money, it’s about wellbeing too.Next time, Matt Rann is back with me and we are chatting about skin cancer and how it can affect your insurance options. I think people are often surprised at how much someone having had skin cancer can alter the terms on offer. I also think a lot of people are shocked when they hear that you should wear suncream everyday in the UK. Yes, even though we only get 5 days of sunshine a year, you should always have suncream on.Remember, if you are listening to this as part of your work, you can claim a CPD certificate on our website, thanks to our sponsors Octo Members.If you want to know more about how to arrange protection insurance, take a look at my Protection Insurance in Practice course here.