'Less than 50% of SMEs' have a financial adviser

To support the launch of the report, Legal & General’s Specialist Protection Team, has recorded three CII accredited training videos in conjunction with Asset TV and Akademia on the importance of having business protection and how advisers can improve their understanding of this market.

The latest training video, An introduction to Business Protection, looks at what Business Protection is and the basics that advisers need to know. In the recent research the biggest barrier to businesses owners taking out business protection was a lack of awareness of the risks and the solutions available. The top reason given by business owners was that “it was not something that they have ever considered”, yet in their research 40% of small businesses said that they would cease to trade within a year of losing a key employee or business owner and almost 60% have no cover in place to protect key members of staff.

Richard Kateley, Head of Specialist Protection at Legal & General said:

“I am passionate about this market and believe that there are huge opportunities for advisers to, not only to break into a new income stream, which is always welcome, but to work in a market where there is less competition and a huge number of business owners needing advice.  Interestingly when we asked business owners who they wanted to learn about business protection from, 59% said a financial adviser - yet less than 50% of the estimated 4.8m SME’s have one. I hope that the work we are doing with our research, these CII accredited training videos and the training courses we run around the UK will help more advisers to speak to more business owners and highlight the risks that many SMEs are running and solutions which are available.”