Insurance-based products, including annuities and smoothed funds, have been coming back into the spotlight, as clients look for ways to create more stable retirement income streams. Rob Kingsbury spoke to Sarah Hills, recently appointed as Wealth Proposition Director at LV=, about her career and the development in the market as well as what LV’s newly launched platform gives the brand.
LV= has been seeing a resurgence of interest recently in insurance-based products, including annuities and smoothed funds, says Sarah Hills, Wealth Proposition Director, all of which has arrived in timely fashion, as the mutual has recently launched its platform for the financial advice market.
“The advice sector is definitely seeing the benefit again in insurance bonds, annuities and smoothed funds,” she says. “As are their clients. We’re seeing advisers blend annuities and smoothed funds for their clients’ retirement income. This is being seen as especially valuable as a solution where those clients have a cautious attitude to risk. And it’s a quite unique product set, in that advice firms are able to do that through us all in one place.”
The LV= platform is open architecture, giving the mutual the ability to offer advice firms a wide suite of savings, investment and retirement products, including MPS, easily accessible in one place. “It gives us a different route to market and an extended layer of interaction with advice firms,” Sarah says. “We can offer different solutions for different segments of advice firms’ client banks.”
Although white labelled and powered by the Scottish Widows platform, “everything the advice firm will see is LV= branded and aligned to the LV= adviser and user experience”, Sarah says.
“Importantly, it gives advisers and paraplanners more choice in how they interact with us and where they can find our range of products.”
There is the added benefit too, for both advice firms and their clients, she points out, that comes from LV=being a mutual. “I think this gives us a big differentiation in the market because of the Member Community which means we are very customer-focussed. We listen to the drum beat of customer feedback and interaction. We have a long history of interacting with our members which means we have a lot of data on customer behaviour and their changing needs.”
It was the mutual aspect of LV= which helped attract Sarah to the role, she says. “There are member benefits that others don’t provide, which are really valuable at certain life stages. For example, one of the key benefits is LV= Doctor Services, which gives members 24/7 access to GPs; as we all know, it can be very difficult to get a doctor’s appointment these days and LV= Doctor Services provides a much needed route to contact a medical specialist when its needed. And we aim to pay mutual bonuses once a year to eligible members.
“When you’re here and externally, you can feel the care and support and valuing of the customer which comes with being a mutual.”
Sarah’s 20 years’ experience of the platform market was one of the reasons she joined LV=, enjoying the buzz of working on a new launch. She was in at the start of platform market in the noughties, joining AXA Elevate from inception. “At that time the platform market was embryonic. There were a handful of us plucked from the AXA business to work on the platform. It was exciting, like working in a start-up. It was a brilliant experience.”
She has worked for AXA Elevate, Standard Life Aberdeen Elevate, Ascentric and M&G Wealth, taking the LV=role in January 2025.
“My career progressed through organisations that were looking at vertical integration, whether in term of platforms, products, investments or advice solutions.
“So coming to LV=, I feel is a natural progression for me,” she says, “drawing on my knowledge and experience and extending it to cover LV’s range of products.
“It’s a very customer-orientated environment, driven by the mutual mindset. And with the recent launch of the platform from scratch, looking at adviser needs, the opportunities for growth and evolving customer life-cycle needs, there’s a lot that is very familiar to me.”
Sarah looks after LV’s wealth proposition, including off-platform products like pensions, annuities and ISAs, where there is a particular product need, as well as the recently launched platform, and the LV= Smoothed Managed Funds.
“We recognise that advice firms will segment their clients in different ways and it’s about having the solutions to address the different needs, and making them as easy as possible for paraplanners and advisers to access,” she explains.
A large part of the role is managing the existing product suite as it is looking at trends in the market and what else could be added to LV’s solutions. “We have a number of different communities that I’m in touch with, so I’m listening to adviser feedback, interacting with our mutual members, as well as looking at opportunities for growth.”
LV= Technical Team and Hub
Also under her remit is the LV= Wealth Propositions Technical Team. This includes 6 experts, all with different specialisms, who can answer technical issues for paraplanners and advisers, through LV’s relationship managers.
The team also outputs to the LV= website under the Technical Hub, a repository for technical information and case studies that can help advisers and paraplanners with topical and particular issues.
“My experience of paraplanners is that they are time poor, so anything that can help them to find the information they need and be more efficient is going to support their ability to get the right outcome for their clients,” Sarah says.
“The team are all either PMI or PFS/CII qualified and highly experienced and the head of the team was once a paraplanner before joining LV=, so we have that real life experience. There is a host of technical articles, commentary on events like the Budget, impacts of new legislation and new regulations, and we’re often asked to put together case studies based on real life scenarios, which can help advisers and paraplanners see the technical aspects of a case. It’s about meeting that customer need, as well as giving us the opportunity to show how our products can benefit clients.”
“We are a company with a long history and experience, we have the Technical Team, who are aways interested in a new case study challenge or an interesting corner of legislation or the market, and have the expertise and experience to make things simpler to understand. So we’d love for paraplanners to have a look at what we have to offer. They may find we can do a lot more for them and their clients than they might have imagined.”
LV= is touring the country with Professional Paraplanner, presenting at selected Technical Insight Seminars.
