Without the right mindset, Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) will never be at the heart of a business. Bruce Lee said "knowing is not enough, you must apply, willing is not enough you must do". Confucius said "To know what is right and not do it is the worst form of cowardice". Clearly, these weren't about TCF, but about conviction.

The Fortis vision is to provide compelling customer solutions creatively. In comparison, FSA Principle 6 says "a firm must pay due regard to the interests of its customers and treat them fairly".

Clearly TCF goes beyond just carrying out consumer research, providing compliant communications material and timely and accurate Management Information. One of the main ways to ensure TCF is in a company's DNA is to do what you really believe is right for customers. Product and process misconceptions that damage consumer confidence have long beset the life protection market. So we set ourselves the challenge of designing them out—and show TCF is in our DNA.

As an industry it's easy to assume the sale of our products equate to solving customer needs. But all too often they don't, as the customer need is much broader than the scope of the product. If we step back and compare customer needs to product sales there is an alarming gap. Insurers need to rise to this challenge and develop new and more effective solutions—this is just what we've done.

Real Life Cover was designed to introduce a genuine needs based solution that focuses on the consumers' real worries of maintaining mortgage repayments, or paying monthly bills. It looks to address these by providing simple, affordable, dependable and balanced financial support against all insurable reasons why there could be a break in earnings.

So far we've been delighted with the response. Peter Sprung, CEO, Park Row recently described it as "the most innovative and complete protection product I have ever seen. Seldom do I get excited about new products as I've seen so many come and go. This should at the very least be a mandatory addition to every mortgage in existence and it's so nice to be reminded about the real reason we all entered this business in the first place."

Real Life Cover has also received many other accolades from Which? who said "we see it as a real alternative to payment protection and mortgage payment protection", Health Insurance, where it was scored 9.5 out of 10, their highest rating ever.

Another good example of us addressing an industry product design flaw has been in YourLife Plan, Critical Illness with Term Assurance. As industry experts know, this cover provides a benefit on the occurrence of one of a pre-defined list of conditions. Consumers on the other hand assume that, given the price, this is the pinnacle of protection products, and that insurers would have calibrated the list to cover all causes of long-term disability. But we know that this is not the case, as two of the major causes of long-term disability—stress and musculoskeletal conditions—are not widely covered, except when they result in total and permanent disability.

Swiss Re's Claims Watch 2007 shows that the industry declined 56% of TPD claims, almost always because they fail to meet the definition of total and permanent (i.e. even with treatment will last throughout life, regardless of the policy term).

Again we challenged ourselves to design out this problem. We believe we've done this by introducing a rider benefit called Temporary Disability. For a small additional premium of typically 10% for a male, this will pay a benefit of 1% per month of the sum assured where the claimant is incapacitated for 26 weeks and the cause of the claim is not covered elsewhere.

We can also point to many other areas where we have placed TCF principles right at the heart of our product and process designs, for example:-

• Terminal illness continuing right up to the expiry of the policy—this compares other products where the benefit ceases either 12 or 18 months prior to the policy end.
• No on-going duty of disclosure once the customer has completed the electronic underwriting assessment
• No automatic exclusions for the person covered
• Premiums that reduce where a related underwriting exclusion applies
• No premium increases for passing a quarter birthday during the application process
• A monetary benefit of £300 to provide support following death or critical illness.

These enhancements add to the cost of our plan, but we believe can be justified in a TCF product recommendation.

We have also tried really hard to make our literature as readable as possible and clearly highlight where our products WON'T pay out, as well as when they will.

At Fortis Life we believe that TCF is in our DNA and that the efforts we've made will help win back consumer confidence in our industry. Please let me know what you think. You can email me on martin.werth@fortis.com

I've been building a life insurer and wow, what an experience it's been! I genuinely started from nothing, except a strategy and a very supportive parent company. It took a month to get a desk—my first meetings were held at Waterloo station or various coffee shops (a throw back to Edward Lloyd's Coffee House), and it was five months before the first employee joined me.