Protective: Flexible Protection for a Changing Market

By staff writer Sponsored By Protective Life

As client needs evolve, Protective is helping financial professionals tailor life insurance strategies through speed, ease, transparency and support.

Life insurance was once viewed by many as a point-in-time transaction: calculate the need, select a product and put coverage in place. But as financial strategies have expanded beyond single-product decisions, the conversation around protection has changed.

Today’s clients increasingly expect life insurance to fit within a broader financial plan. Financial professionals, in turn, need carrier partners that can support a wide range of needs while delivering an experience that feels faster, simpler and more aligned with their clients’ other financial products.

“The protection conversation has really evolved from a point-in-time transaction to address a specific need to being much more a part of a broader financial strategy conversation,” said Aaron Seurkamp, President of the Protection and Retirement Division at Protective. “Increasingly, clients are buying life insurance from financial professionals that provide a suite of products designed to address the entire scope of their needs.”

That shift has important implications for carriers. It is no longer enough to offer competitive products on paper. Financial professionals need solutions that are flexible enough to meet individual client needs, efficient enough to support modern expectations and reliable enough to protect the client relationships they have worked hard to build.

At Protective, that means focusing on an experience built around speed, ease and transparency, while preserving the human support that matters when cases become complex.

A More Flexible Conversation

For Seurkamp, one of the biggest misconceptions about life insurance is that it is rigid or one-dimensional.

“In my mind, life insurance is one of the most customizable financial products that can be purchased,” he said.

That customization can begin with the amount of coverage needed, whether the client is addressing income replacement, outstanding debts, estate planning needs, business obligations or other long-term goals. But it also extends to product type, duration, optional riders and future flexibility.

Protective’s core product lineup is designed to support a range of needs-based conversations. Classic Choice Term offers competitive term pricing, coverage durations up to 40 years and options that may help clients transition to permanent protection later. Lifetime Assurance UL supports guaranteed death benefit strategies, with guarantees available to age 121 and flexible case designs such as short pays, single pays and 1035 exchanges. Strategic Objectives II VUL gives financial professionals the ability to build strategies around protection or accumulation, with access to a broad investment lineup and optional no-lapse guarantee features.

The goal, Seurkamp said, is not to lead with product. It is to help financial professionals begin with the client’s needs and then identify the strategy that fits.

“Let’s not talk about product,” he said. “Let’s nail down the needs that you have, and then identify the solutions that could best fit the needs uncovered during the fact-finding conversation.”

That approach is especially important as clients’ needs change over time. A young family may begin with affordable term coverage. A business owner may need more complex strategies. A high-net-worth client may need a permanent strategy that addresses estate planning, tax-deferred growth or long-term policy flexibility.

“What risks does the client want to transfer from themselves to the insurance company?” Seurkamp said. “What are the corresponding costs associated with it? And what flexibility do you want to entertain along the way?”

Meeting Clients Where They Are

Personalization has become a baseline expectation across nearly every consumer experience. Life insurance is no exception.

Protective approaches personalization in three ways: product design, the buying experience and the ownership experience. Clients can select the type and duration of coverage, determine whether they want temporary or permanent protection, and consider options that may support future needs. But the purchase process also must fit the client.

Some clients want a streamlined, low-friction experience. Others have complex health histories, larger coverage needs or sophisticated goals that require more guidance. Protective has built multiple underwriting paths to support those different journeys.

For qualifying clients, instant approval can provide coverage in as little as 14 minutes, with the fastest decisions in three minutes. Accelerated underwriting offers decisions in about three days, with no medical exams, fast decisions and minimal health questions. Traditional underwriting remains available for more complex cases, including those that may require a full review, medical examination or medical records.

The flexibility of those paths matters because, as Seurkamp noted, a client seeking $1 million of 20-year term coverage may have very different expectations than a 70-year-old client seeking $25 million of life insurance for a complex need.

“It can’t be one size fits all,” he said. “We pride ourselves on being able to meet all of those protection needs.”

Technology with a Human Center

Technology is helping Protective make the buying process faster and more efficient. More applications can move through instant or accelerated underwriting. Fewer cases require traditional fluids or medical requirements. Behind the scenes, newer capabilities can help summarize attending physician statements and support faster review of more complicated cases.

But Seurkamp is clear that technology is not meant to replace relationships.

“Despite all of the automation and the investment in technology and the speed that we are achieving as an organization, we don’t want to do that at the expense of the relationships that we form with our distribution partners,” he said.

That balance is critical. Straightforward cases should move quickly and smoothly. But when a case is complicated, financial professionals need access to experienced people who can help them navigate the process.

“There are times when a case will be complicated regardless of size, and you will need to get a trusted friend on the phone to help you through that process,” Seurkamp said. “We are still, at our heart, a relationship-driven company that exists to support our field force.”

That same philosophy shapes Protective’s broader view of ease of doing business. Speed is important, but it is only one part of the experience. Financial professionals need clarity before the sale, efficiency during the purchase process, self-service tools during ownership and confidence that beneficiaries will be supported when a claim is made.

“When we talk about delivering an end-to-end favorable experience for our customers and agents, we have a whole lot of focus on the product side,” Seurkamp said. “We have a whole lot of focus on the purchase and underwriting side, but we have equivalent amounts of focus on the ownership experience once it’s purchased and the claims process when we fulfill that.”

A Partner, Not Just an Insurer

In a competitive market, products can appear similar on the surface. Pricing, rates and features matter, but Seurkamp believes true differentiation often becomes clear during the purchase experience and when something does not go exactly as planned.

“How often do things go right? And then how quickly does that carrier respond when things go wrong?” he said.

For financial professionals, that distinction matters because recommending a carrier is also an act of trust. Their client relationship may span many years, multiple products and a broad financial plan. If a carrier fails to deliver, the financial professional’s relationship with the client can be affected.

“Every time an agent makes the decision to place a case with Protective, we know that that agent is giving us a vote of confidence that we will protect and defend that client relationship,” Seurkamp said.

Protective brings significant scale to that responsibility. Through its subsidiaries, Protective is helping more than 32 million people protect what matters most and has $1 trillion of life insurance in force. The company also has received third-party recognition, including Forbes Advisor’s “Best Term Life Insurance Companies” award in 2023, 2024 and 2025, a 5-star rating from USA Today as a best overall life insurance company and a 4.5-star rating from U.S. News as a best life insurance company of 2024.

But Seurkamp said the company’s focus remains practical and forward-looking: continue improving, continue reducing friction and continue helping financial professionals make life insurance part of their client conversations.

“I think the greater opportunity is to change the conversation and make life insurance a day-to-day conversation as part of the broader financial plan,” he said.

Looking ahead, he believes financial professionals will need two things most from carriers: consistency and a commitment to continuous improvement.

“We want Protective to be perceived as the most consistent, and flexible carrier that our financial professionals do business with,” Seurkamp said. “We take a great deal of pride in meeting agents, financial advisors and their clients where they are and aligning our business processes to deliver value.”

In other words, Protective is not just working to make life insurance faster. It is working to make protection easier to discuss, easier to tailor, easier to purchase and easier to trust.