Air Group announces first 'Temperature Check' of equity release provider service levels

11 November 2020

Air Group, the collective of companies covering a range of retirement and later life services, has today (10th November 2020) announced its first equity release provider ‘Temperature Check’ focusing on a number of key service measures, as experienced by advisers.

The ‘Temperature Check’ service analysis has been designed to give smaller advisers a collective voice in terms of providing feedback on providers’ service levels and Air Group hopes to encourage stronger dialogue in order to improve service standards across the sector.

Almost 200 smaller advisers who account for 8% of the plans taken out in H1 2020 rated providers they had used on four key service areas and three net promoter factors (see methodology below). The top three in the Overall Category were: Canada Life (8.42 out of 10), Legal & General (8.30), and more2life (8.29), with the top three in each individual service category as follows:

The top three in the Net Promoter Score Category were: Pure Retirement (85.33%), more2life (81.04%), and Canada Life (79.91%), with the individual categories breaking down as:

The providers whose service levels were reviewed as part of the ‘Temperature Check’ in the first half of 2020 were: Aviva, Canada Life, Hodge, Legal & General, LV=, Just, One Family, more2life and Pure Retirement. Air Group is engaging with each one to provide feedback on the analysis and ensure that the collective voice of the smaller advisers who use its services is heard.

Air Group said it will run this analysis again next year to cover the second-half of 2020 and to regularly track provider service levels while delivering ongoing feedback from advisers.

Stuart Wilson, CEO at Air Group, commented:

“2020 is turning out to be an extraordinary year for many reasons, and because of this we believe it’s absolutely vital that advisers and equity release providers work closely together in order to help support each other, and to ensure that their clients continue to get access to the best products and service available in the marketplace.

“Many advisers active in the equity release sector are small and medium-sized firms and our new ‘Temperature Check’ means we can offer them a collective voice and help drive up service standards in our sector. Effectively we are creating a platform to collate, analyse and track feedback, and to encourage providers to take this on board and, where necessary, react to it.

“We’d like to congratulate all the providers who feature in our inaugural ‘Top Threes’ for overall, net promoter and individual categories as this represents a significant achievement and is a mark of the time, effort and ongoing resource that is committed to delivering strong service.

“Given the time period that this ‘Temperature Check’ covers, any provider making the top three in any of our categories deserves considerable praise. The national lockdown put a significant amount of pressure on all equity release providers and to maintain a strong level of service throughout that is testament to the commitment these teams have shown to the market.

“The ‘Temperature Check’ is a mechanism to highlight excellent service levels within the sector, and to present advisers’ views and, by doing so, help all providers move both their overall and category scores up in the future.

“This is now an exercise we will repeat every half-year and we are confident that by sharing this analysis Air Group can continue to help providers drive up their service standards and outputs to an even higher level.”