The future of legal expenses insurance roundtable - relevance, innovation, and education?
- Addept
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
The challenges facing traditional legal expenses providers are issues Addept talks about frequently. With capacity withdrawals, reducing product appetite and cover options, evolution in the market is crucial if the products are to remain relevant and deliver value to customers in the face of the changing legal landscape and changing customer understanding and need.
These were some of the points discussed at a recent Lyons Davidson roundtable. Titled “The Customer Value, Legal Access and The Next Chapter For LEI”, our MD, Richard Finan joined a panel of legal, regulatory, mediation, consumer advocacy, and insurance experts to explore the role of legal expenses in improving access to justice, and what needs to be done to maintain its relevance.
Richard’s background and understanding of the legal expenses market enabled him to provide the historical context behind the product. In the past, legal expenses insurance (LEI) was sold on a more assumptive basis as part of household cover. While this meant there were many more consumers with policies, awareness was lower. Richard explained that a move away from this model to a more consent driven one, led to a reduction in overall coverage with fewer customers covered now than 10 years ago.
Meeting evolving needs
The need for improved consumer understanding and how products can be accessed was an important part of the discussion. This focused, in part, on a key area in Addept’s approach to the development of its legal expenses solutions; the gap between cover and customer need.
Richard emphasised that making products relevant had to be based on the concept of risk insurability. Talking about common legal transactions not traditionally considered as insurable risk, Richard suggested starting with the customer’s typically use of legal services and look at the unforeseen risks in those journeys and consider how a product could be built around these areas. “If you take a step back and look at that consumer life cycle,” he said, “you can identify areas of risk within those common solicitor uses where you can insure against them.”
Expanding value measurement
Richard also pointed to the continuing question of value. However, while the Financial Conduct Authority’s value measures point to low claims frequency data for household LEI products, he highlighted that the data did not take into consideration the range of legal advice, signposting, digital resources, and early prevention actions delivered as part of the product. He argued that this wider support needed to be recognised properly in the Regulator’s value measures.
Moving forward with innovation
Turning to innovation, another important element of Addept’s business model, Richard pointed to the ‘outdated’ telephone-only legal helpline model and the customers desire for a flexible approach and spoke of the benefits of a “legal concierge” model that would steer customers to the right support at the right time through a mix of channels.
What the roundtable demonstrated was an acceptance of value of legal expenses but a recognition that the market needs to address key challenges including improved awareness and greater access to flexible innovative solutions that meet the real needs of customers
As we approach the launch of our own personal legal expenses solutions, all these themes have been an important part of our design and development process. Follow us on LinkedIn for updates and news on our legal expenses and ancillary insurance solutions.
For more on the roundtable and the areas discussed you can visit https://www.lyonsdavidson.co.uk/app/uploads/2026/05/MIM71-LYONS-DAVIDSON-Supplement-Customer-roundtable.pdf
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