I was invited to a rather interesting meeting at the Association of British Insurers (ABI) last week.

The topic was one that may ultimately be important to all UK employers and their employees: simplified Group Risk for the many.

Group Risk is a collective industry name for three major employee benefits:

• Group Death in Service
• Group Income Protection
• Group Critical Illness

These benefits are hugely important in helping employees, and their families, manage financially in difficult times. Offering such benefits is also beneficial to employers who can tick the moral, recruitment, and retention boxes for relatively little cost, and can also benefit in other ways such as free rehab services. It is therefore generally recognised, and accepted, that widening the numbers covered by such plans would be beneficial to all.

But (of course), it’s not as easy as that.

Those gathered around the table all agreed that the products on offer were good quality, and often not really appreciated for the true value they offered. Despite this, and repeated efforts by the industry in the last few years to widen the appeal of Group Risk, the numbers are not climbing anywhere near fast enough.

One contributor at the meeting suggested that the number of employees covered for Income Protection in the UK was around 2 million. This sounds impressive until you compare this figure with the UK working population of around 30 million. Evidently there is some way to go here.

So the key to success will be ensuring that Group Risk becomes a given for employers and their employees. At the moment, it’s only for the lucky few.

This reminds me a little of the starting position of workplace pensions a few years ago. Again, despite various initiatives, the numbers in pensions were just not climbing (on some measures they were actually falling). After several false starts, Auto-Enrolment hove into view. And despite the issues and complexity of Auto-Enrolment, it is already undeniable that the numbers saving for their retirement in the UK are appreciably higher.

So what does this tell us?

In short, the industry needs the cosh of legislation to really make a difference to the numbers who benefit from Group Risk cover. To achieve this ideal the industry will need to create light touch and low cost products that benefit employee, employer and HM Treasury. This meeting may have been an important first step towards this.

The next logical step is for at least one of the major political parties to adopt Group Risk coverage as a manifesto commitment. And with a General Election only a year away, now might be the right time to do just that.

Will keep you posted.

Best regards

Steve