Protection leads: consent, contact and the audit trail

A practical overview for advisers, not compliance advice — your permissions and your compliance function come first.

Protection enquiries differ from trade enquiries in a way that matters commercially as well as legally. The consumer has volunteered something personal, often prompted by a life event, and they are unusually sensitive to how the first contact feels.

The first call sets everything

Someone who has just enquired about life cover is frequently doing so because of a diagnosis, a birth, a bereavement or a mortgage. A brisk, scripted opening lands badly in a way it does not when you are quoting for windows.

• Name the enquiry and where it came from, immediately
• Ask whether now is a convenient moment, and mean it
• Do not ask health questions before you have explained who you are and why
• Offer to call back at a time that suits, and then do

Check what the source page said

As with any regulated enquiry, you inherit the expectations set by a page you did not write. For protection, look specifically for anything implying guaranteed acceptance, a fixed premium, or cover without underwriting.

Check the supplier's status too. Passing a potential policyholder's details to an adviser or insurer is outside FCA regulation only if the supplier does nothing more than pass on basic information such as a name and contact details; the FCA's guidance excludes answers gathered by pre-purchase questioning. A supplier that asks about cover, age or health, or phones people to qualify them, needs to be authorised or an appointed representative, and your firm must not use the insurance distribution services of a firm that is neither.

Consent, and be careful what you buy

Health information is special category data under UK GDPR, with a higher bar than ordinary personal data. The safest position for a lead buyer is not to receive it at all in the enquiry.

Buy enough to make a competent first call — name, contact details, general product interest, and consent evidence. Gather everything else yourself, in your own advised process, where you control the basis and the record.

• Opt-in wording as displayed, with timestamp, IP and source URL
• Confirmation that the consumer was told they would be contacted by phone
• TPS and CTPS screening evidence
• No health detail on the record unless you have a clear, documented basis for holding it

Exclusivity is a conduct issue here

A consumer who enquires about life cover after a diagnosis and then receives five calls has had a genuinely distressing experience. In a regulated context that is a treating-customers-fairly problem, not just a conversion one, and it attaches to every firm that called.

“In protection, a shared lead is not a cheaper lead. It is a shared complaint.”

The records to keep

• The enquiry record as supplied, including consent evidence
• The source page or creative, obtained at the point of purchase
• Your own call recordings and notes
• Suppression: an immediate, permanent stop when someone asks

Agree retention and post-termination access with your supplier in writing. If a complaint arrives eighteen months after you stopped buying from someone, you still need to be able to show the basis on which you made the call.