Paymentshield enhances adviser platform

The latest enhancement, now live, sees Paymentshield extend the validity of home insurance quotes from 120 days to 180 days in an effort to ease some of the frustrations caused by current delays with mortgage completions and new build purchases.

The extension will give advisers more confidence when they’re providing a home insurance quote that the price will remain the same on the date of exchange, and will enable them to discuss GI earlier in the mortgage process without fear of the quote expiring before the transaction is complete.

It also helps to address one of the biggest barriers advisers consistently report facing when it comes to selling GI to remortgage clients: insurance renewal dates and remortgage dates not matching up.

This was reaffirmed in the results of Paymentshield’s Adviser Survey, conducted last month with 331 advisers. When asked what would make discussing GI with remortgage clients more appealing, the top answer was “extending quote validity to help match up renewal and remortgage dates”, with one quarter (24.6%) of the vote.

Last year, Paymentshield calculated that advisers were losing out on £16 million a year in commission fees through not selling GI to remortgage and product transfer clients.

The quote validity extension follows the introduction of a new requoting function on Adviser Hub which, should a pending policy expire, enables advisers to automatically re-population information.

The third enhancement, due to go live imminently, has been delivered to prompt advisers to ensure that long-standing policies are still meeting their clients’ needs. New functionality will flag where policies have been in place for eight, nine and 10 years, making it easier for advisers to identify those clients who might benefit from a review.

Louise Pengelly, proposition director at Paymentshield, commented: “Millions of home-buyers are currently experiencing really long delays in the purchasing chain. This is understandably making life difficult for advisers when it comes to quoting GI, and can be frustrating for clients if it causes the quote to jump up in price. By extending the period which our home insurance quotes are valid for, we’re trying to eliminate a major pain point and help advisers deliver a better customer experience. Now, they’ll have that extra time buffer to provide reassurance in the event that the exchange date does slip.

“We also know that the issue of a mis-match between renewal and remortgage dates has typically been a headache for advisers when it comes to selling GI, and this extension directly delivers on something they’ve told us would help to solve that.”