This session examines how insurers are deploying AI in practice, where it is generating measurable business value, and where human expertise remains critical.

Speakers will explore how organisations are balancing efficiency and automation with fairness, transparency and regulatory compliance, while addressing the challenges of integrating AI into legacy systems, workflows and distribution channels.

Critical Illness Cover (CIC) and Income Protection (IP) uptake among renters remains low, despite many facing the same financial risks as homeowners if illness or injury affects their ability to work and meet ongoing living costs.

This session will:

• Explore why renters are less engaged with protection.
• Examine how mortgage-led messaging and "later life" thinking suppress consideration of CIC and IP.
• Discuss how protection can be reframed around income security, recovery, and the ability to meet rental and everyday living costs.

With economic inactivity linked to ill health at record levels, employers and insurers are increasingly turning to vocational rehabilitation and early intervention to support employees sooner. This session explores how these services are being used in practice, what impact they are having on return-to-work outcomes, and whether they can meaningfully shift the trajectory of workforce health in the UK.

With inheritance tax becoming a growing concern for more clients, advisers are increasingly being asked how families can meet future IHT liabilities. This session explores where Joint Life Second Death policies fit within modern estate planning, how they compare with lifetime gifting strategies such as gift inter vivos, and the trade-offs between giving wealth away now versus retaining control and using cover to meet future tax liabilities.

How would you advise this client? In this interactive session, advisers will work through realistic client situations, voting on the best course of action before hearing how industry experts would approach the challenge.

In a Consumer Duty world, selecting the cheapest protection policy is not always the same as delivering the best customer outcome. Yet many advisers still feel pressure to justify recommendations primarily on price. This session explores how advisers can evidence product suitability and value beyond premium alone and confidently demonstrate to compliance teams why a higher-priced solution may sometimes be the right choice for their client.

For many firms, vulnerability data remains one of the most difficult areas of Consumer Duty implementation. Concerns around GDPR and data protection can create uncertainty about what information can be collected, recorded and shared across the distribution chain.

Drawing on recent industry guidance, the discussion will examine:

• Where firms are getting it wrong.
• Why GDPR should be viewed as an enabler rather than a barrier.
• How better use of vulnerability data can improve customer support, product design and consumer outcomes.

Clients rarely wake up thinking about life insurance, income protection or critical illness cover but they do think about their families, careers, mortgages and financial security. This session looks at how advisers can connect protection to the issues clients care about most, creating timely and meaningful conversations that uncover needs, build trust and improve long-term financial resilience.