COVER Magazine welcomes you to the Claims & Underwriting Forum.

We start off the day with a welcome from our editor, Cameron Roberts. 

Vulnerability is not always visible. As vulnerable customers affect the entire value chain, and Consumer Duty continues to drive the need for deeper recognition of customer circumstances, this session will look at what best practice looks like when vulnerability is raised, and how to embed supportive, fair outcomes as part of everyday advice.

This session will:

• Consider the challenges involved for customers with long-term health conditions to access insurance.
• Assess the impact of underwriting decisions.
• Examine how processes can be designed to reduce friction and improve outcomes for vulnerable customers.

Cancer is no longer a niche issue—it’s a workforce reality. In this session, Vanessa Sallows and Kelly McCabe explore what living and working with cancer actually looks like today – and what it could like with the right thinking and support systems in place. Building on the themes from L&G’s Life, Work and Cancer conference, they will challenge the gap between the support we think exists and the reality employees experience. Expect an honest, human conversation that goes beyond treatment—into identity, work, relationships and the long tail of impact cancer has on people’s lives and careers. Crucially, this session will move from insight to action—setting out what insurers, advisers and employers need to do differently and a must-attend for anyone serious about improving customer outcomes in a world where cancer is part of everyday working life.

Long lists of medical conditions, exclusions and technical language can make protection products difficult for customers to fully understand what they are buying and when they can claim.

This session will:

• Explore whether current policy structures and wording genuinely support informed customer decision-making.
• Consider key challenges around customer understanding for CIC, IP and life.
• Examine the adviser’s duty of care in translating policy detail.
  

The protection market is entering a new era of customer engagement, one where AI is no longer simply about efficiency, but about delivering deeper customer understanding, stronger retention and more proactive support.

In this session, we will explore what that shift means for the future of advice. From intelligent engagement and conversational analysis to personalised communication and real-time customer insight, AI is rapidly changing how customers interact with protection. But as technology takes on a greater role, where does human advice add the most value, and will AI ever replace the adviser?

With protection being the bedrock of financial advice, this panel brings together mortgage, protection and wealth advisers to explore how connecting the pieces of modern financial planning can deliver stronger client outcomes and more sustainable long-term value.

From inheritance and later life planning to care, protection and intergenerational support, the discussion will examine what joined-up advice looks like in practice. It will also ask whether the future belongs to advisers who work collaboratively across disciplines rather than operating in isolation.

Rebroking was a key focus of the FCA’s Pure Protection Market Study Interim Report, which raised concerns about switching incentives and the potential for poor customer outcomes.

This session will:

• Examine whether rebroking serves customers’ best interests.
• Explore whether the FCA’s proposed introduction of IRNs could benefit the industry by increasing transparency and deterring aggressive practices.

Thank you for joining us at COVER Customer Care Conference!