Square Health are proud to announce that we are inaugural sponsors of the Protection Distributors Group (PDG) to enable them to increase activity and strengthen governance within the industry.

PDG is delighted to have arranged financial sponsorship support from a range of key businesses associated with the protection industry. The other inaugural sponsors are; CIExpert, iPipeline, Iress, NMG Consulting, Protection Guru, and UnderwriteMe. These businesses, in different ways, support adviser activity in quoting, analysing, underwriting and placing Protection into the UK market, and have all agreed with the PDG values in working towards delivering better consumer outcomes.

The PDG was established in 2016 by a group of like-minded Protection advisers, and incorporated as a not-for-profit organisation in November 2020. In April 2023 there were 23 firm members in the PDG, including Networks, Nationals, and individual practices. The sponsorship income helps keep membership fees affordable for all member firms and with them funds the cost of the small PDG executive, thus enabling the many initiatives that aim to have a positive impact on consumers who purchase protection products, and so help grow the protection market. 

Neil McCarthy, chair of the PDG commented “As the PDG grows we want to use the funding to better support the operational side so we can continue to develop and deliver actions on a number of initiatives. We have successfully created a Claims Charter outlining what we feel is an industry wide minimum best practice to help clients, which has been adopted by most insurers, as well as a Funeral Payment Pledge, and are working on a number of initiatives to improve standards in policy retention processes and distribution transparency.”

Steve Casey, Marketing Director at Square Health stated “Square Health is delighted to become an inaugural sponsor for the PDG which is at the forefront of raising standards to deliver better customer outcomes.” Another sponsor, Alan Lakey, Director at CIExpert commented, “Over the last 10 years, CIExpert has always prided itself in shining a light on product variations in a way that has helped to influence change in the protection market and encourage improvements that deliver improved outcomes for clients. We feel very aligned with the PDG’s initiatives that support this same philosophy and therefore our sponsorship and support was a very natural decision.”

PDG purpose

The Protection Distributors Group (PDG) mission is to help people find the protection they need by encouraging insurers and intermediaries to deliver better consumer outcomes. We see a future where empathy, honesty and transparency are the core drivers to insurer and intermediary care.  We want to build trust within the insurance industry.

The PDG was established in 2016 by a group of like minded Protection advisers, and incorporated as a not-for-profit organisation in November 2020. In April 2023 there were 23 firm members in the PDG.

The PDG has successfully created a Claims Charter* outlining what we feel is an industry wide minimum best practice to help clients, which has been adopted by most insurers, as well as Funeral Payment Pledge*, and are working on a number of initiatives to improve consistency in “Retention” processes and “Transparency” in distribution.

For more information contact Neil McCarthy, Chair PDG or Roy McLoughlin at: info@protectiondistributorsgroup.org.uk

*For more information on Claims Charter, Funeral Pledge and other PDG campaigns go to https://www.protectiondistributorsgroup.org.uk/campaigns/

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