Gert-Jan Heuvelink, Barbara Holland and Albert Zoon of PricewaterhouseCoopers look in the on-line publication Insurance Digest at how a risk-conscious 'lifecycle' approach to design, marketing, sales and after-sales support could help insurers to avoid storing up trouble for the future.  
     
Summary points:     
- Class actions in the Netherlands relating to the charges for unit-linked policies have highlighted the risk of retrospective ‘mis-selling’ claims for insurers marketing long-term policies.

- The risks of mis-selling underline the importance of involving the compliance and risk management functions in product design from the outset.

- A lifecycle approach that looks at the risk profile of the product from design through to marketing to selling and post-sales performance would improve companies’ ability to anticipate and respond to potential problems.

- Rather than fixing problems in isolation, a more enduring solution would be to identify the root causes and, based on this investigation, look at how governance and risk management processes could be strengthened to help avoid similar difficulties in the future.

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