Fintech Protection Guru has launched a price and criteria comparison tool for financial advisers seeking protection policies for clients.

The company says it hopes the new ProtectionGuruPro.co.uk service can help stem the decline in protection advice post the Retail Distribution Review.

The new service, which provides analysis for income protection, critical illness, mortgage protection and other types of term contract, is designed to support the new FCA Consumer Duty requirements.

The tool will enable advisers to source the “best quality protection product” within the client’s budget, the firm says.

The tool identifies the most suitable cover for clients and produces a report providing compliance record-justifying product selection, with express and bespoke options available.

ProtectionGuruPro.co.uk is designed to simplify the process of protection product recommendations by helping advisers make ‘quality-based’ recommendations - not solely focused on price - to ensure better consumer outcomes. 

The tool is provided by parent fintech the Financial Technology Research Centre, which was established in 1995. 

ProtectionGuruPro.co.uk will launch later this month and will be free to advisers until 31 August, after which point the service will cost £40+VAT per month, per user. HSBC Life has sponsored the product until the end of August, giving advisers time to evaluate the new service, the firm says.

Quotations in the initial version of the service will be provided by iPipeline and, after agreeing with the client the contract they intend to proceed with, ProtectionGuruPro users can then submit applications electronically via iPipeline.  

Adam Higgs, head of Research at Protection Guru, said: “Insurers now provide a wide range of products aimed at different types of clients and offer far more tailored solutions than ever before. Whilst this is a positive market development, it does present a big issue for many advisers as there are so many product options to make sense of. Understanding the differences from product to product is very difficult. Protection Guru Pro has been built specifically with this in mind and will help advisers not only focus on the products that are relevant for their client but also quickly and easily compare them based on the unique requirements of their client.”

Protection Guru founder Ian McKenna added: “Invariably advisers want to find the best value product for clients but historically that has meant advisers have had to do a lot of manual research. While for many years insurers have been seeking to innovate and differentiate their products by quality, the overwhelming majority of comparison services focus on price, and even those that look wider tend to just cover individual products or have limited data. By bringing together all our extensive research, and combined with price comparison data, we can enable all advisers to generate a comprehensive protection advice quickly and easily.

“We believe this is a key step in achieving Protection Guru’s overall aim of helping grow the number of families protected in the UK.”