Free life insurance leads: legitimate sources for UK advisers

How to get free life insurance leads in the UK

Work outwards from trust: clients and referrals take the least effort per conversation, introducers take longest to set up, and content takes longest to pay back.

The Association of Mortgage Intermediaries’ November 2025 survey of mortgage and protection advisers found existing clients and referrals were their most common sources of protection leads. It was voluntary and the coverage gives no sample size, so treat the figures as a guide to those advisers rather than the whole market:

Buyers say the same: in the FCA’s 2025 consumer research, 30% of recent protection buyers found their firm through a recommendation (small sample). Our guide on how to get life insurance leads compares every channel, paid ones included.

How do you get free leads from clients, referrals and networking?

Start with the clients you already have

Your client bank is the nearest thing to life insurance leads free of charge, because the relationship and the data already exist. More than 40% of mortgage holders lack life insurance (FCA Financial Lives 2024, cited in the FCA’s interim market study report). In the AMI research, 85% of advisers said they review protection at remortgage, down from 92% in 2021.

Tag clients in your CRM by the moments when cover needs change, and set reminders:

• Remortgage or further borrowing. An old decreasing term policy may no longer match the balance; a separate top-up policy is often an option.
• A house move. A bigger mortgage usually means a bigger need.
• A new baby, marriage or separation. Dependants change, and a joint policy may no longer fit.
• Self-employment or a new job. Death-in-service benefit can end with the old employer.
• A policy nearing its end. Some clients still have dependants or debts when cover stops.

A review is a reason to check cover, not to replace it. A new policy means fresh underwriting at an older age and can lose terms the client won’t get again. Recommend a switch only where it is clearly better for the client, record why, and never let commission or a clawback date shape the advice.

Servicing a policy the client holds is different from promoting new or extra cover, which is marketing, and a call the client asked for is different from one you make on your own initiative. An unsolicited marketing call to a TPS-registered number needs the client to have told your firm they don’t object to your calls. For email and text, PECR’s soft opt-in can cover marketing to your own clients about your own similar products and services if you collected their details during a sale or negotiation and offered an opt-out then and in every message since; agree where the lines sit with your compliance adviser or network.

Ask for referrals at the right moments

Ask when the client feels the value of what you did: the week a policy goes on risk, at the end of a review, or when they mention a sister expecting or a friend buying a house. Keep it short and easy to say no to.

Letting the friend contact you is the cleanest route. If a client offers someone’s number instead, ask the client to check with that person first, and don’t call until they have agreed to hear from your firm. A call offering advice is a marketing call: if the number is on the TPS, you can call only if the person has told your firm they don’t object to your calls.

You must also give the person your privacy information, including where you got their details, at first contact or within one month if that is sooner. Our guide to converting life insurance leads covers the first call.

Check any thank-you gift against your firm’s or network’s policy first; the rules on paying introducers explain why regular rewards need care.

Do workplace talks, networking and social media bring in free leads?

Yes, slowly. Talks and networking reach people who aren’t searching yet, your website reaches people who are, and each comes with a rule to respect.

• 
  Workplace talksOffer employers’ wellbeing sessions a plain talk on death-in-service benefit, mortgages and term versus whole of life cover. Have your compliance adviser or network check your slides are clear, fair and not misleading, and let staff book through a form with a privacy notice, never from a staff list.
• 
  Networking and communityBusiness groups, clubs, school and charity events build trust through repeat contact, and many charge membership fees. Never copy attendee lists or member directories into a calling or email list.
• 
  Website, Google profile and reviewsAnswer the questions your clients ask, and expect months before enquiries arrive. Set up a free Google Business Profile in your firm’s FCA Register name, and ask every client for a review at the same point, with no reward: Google’s review policy bans selective requests and incentives. Never write, buy or hide reviews, or mention a client’s cover in a reply.
• 
  Social posts and your enquiry formPosts that promote your services must be clear, fair and not misleading, and your network or principal may require sign-off. Your form needs a privacy notice naming your firm, a recorded choice for any marketing email or text, worded as your compliance adviser agrees, and no health questions you don’t yet need.

Once you pay to promote posts or run ads, the channel stops being free and the platforms’ financial services ad policies apply. Our life insurance lead generation playbook covers paid search, social ads and consent wording, and our guide to life insurance web leads covers buying web enquiries instead.

Can mortgage brokers, estate agents and solicitors send you free leads?

Professional introducers meet people at the moments protection matters most, and more than half of consumers in the AMI research said they would be happy to be referred to another adviser for protection. Approach partners who see the trigger but don’t advise on protection:

• Mortgage advisers who place mortgages but prefer to refer protection.
• Estate agents, who know about purchases weeks before completion.
• Conveyancers and solicitors, for house purchases and wills.
• Accountants and bookkeepers, whose self-employed clients have no employer benefits.
• Financial planners who don’t advise on protection.

Separation, bereavement or a serious diagnosis can also leave people in vulnerable circumstances, as the FCA’s guidance on vulnerable customers (FG21/1) recognises, and the Consumer Duty applies before someone becomes your client. Agree that partners introduce only when the client asks, and give people time.

The rules on paying introducers

These leads are only free if nobody is paid, and many partners expect a fee, a share of commission or referrals back. The FCA’s perimeter guidance (PERG 5.6) says introducing customers to an insurance intermediary can count as “making arrangements with a view to transactions”, a regulated activity, and the general introducing exclusion doesn’t apply to insurance.

The narrower Article 33B exclusion covers passing on details the introducer already holds, such as a name and number, but not information gathered by asking pre-purchase questions. One-off introductions, and introducers who are completely indifferent to whether a policy results, are treated differently again.

A regular paid partner can be appointed as an introducer appointed representative (IAR), limited to introductions and non-real-time financial promotions; if your firm is an appointed representative, your principal makes that appointment. Payment also bears on the value customers get under the product governance rules and the Consumer Duty.

Set up an introducer partnership

1. Choose two or three partnersPick from the list above, starting with firms you already know.
2. Agree what they sayWho you are, that you are a separate firm and what you do, with no comment on policies, prices or whether cover is needed.
3. Settle any payment with complianceThe fee, whether an IAR appointment is needed and how the client is told. Partners may have their own duties: the SRA Code of Conduct requires solicitors to tell clients about any financial interest in a referral.
4. Agree how details reach youIdeally the client asks the partner to pass their details to your firm by name. Record that, and put data sharing terms in writing.
5. Call promptly, then reviewExplain how you got their details and give your privacy information at first contact. Track introductions and policies by partner, and report outcomes back only where the client has agreed.

Are free lead lists, PDFs and free trials safe to use?

Free lists and “free leads PDFs”

Don’t use any of these, however they are offered:

• Spreadsheets of names and numbers shared on forums, social groups or download sites
• “Free leads PDFs” that contain personal details rather than advice
• Phone directories or business listings used for cold calling
• Contact details scraped from social media profiles or comments
• Old enquiry data from a firm that has closed, with no record of what people agreed to

All of these fail the same test: they almost never let you prove where each record came from or what each person agreed to. Free data is still personal data, and once you use it your firm answers for it.

The UK rules for buying and calling leads apply in full: TPS screening before marketing calls, consent naming your firm before marketing emails or texts (the soft opt-in never covers someone else’s list), and privacy information saying where you got each person’s details.

Your first call also has to say where the number came from, and “a free download” ends the conversation and invites a complaint.

The ICO acts on data nobody can trace. In May 2026 it fined Energy Prices Direct £160,000 over more than 700,000 calls to TPS and CTPS-registered numbers, made with bought data that hadn’t been checked for screening and that the firm sometimes couldn’t trace to a source. The calls were made in 2024 and early 2025, so the old £500,000 cap applied; for breaches since 5 February 2026, PECR fines can reach £17.5 million or 4% of global turnover.

Paid lists raise the same questions: see the risks of buying a leads list. Consent also weakens with time, as our guide to aged life insurance leads explains.

Free trials and “free leads” offers

Some sellers offer a free trial or a batch of free leads for life insurance to earn your business. A trial batch may not match what you would pay for, so check:

• The seller’s status on the FCA Financial Services Register, and its principal if it is an appointed representative
• Whether trial leads match the paid ones in type, source and consent journey: fresh or aged, exclusive or shared
• The exact consent wording: who it names and which contact methods the person agreed to
• How many leads, over what period, and who else receives each one
• What happens when it ends: automatic renewal, a minimum spend, a notice period or a card kept on file
• The credit policy for invalid numbers and duplicates, and how objections and deletion requests pass between you

Trial leads carry the same duties as paid ones. A seller that checks your FCA number before releasing a trial is a good sign; one that hands data to anyone who asks gives you less reason to trust how it collected it.

Illustrative example: if one lead in ten usually becomes a policy, ten free leads should produce about one, so a trial tells you about data quality, such as working numbers and people who remember enquiring, not conversion. Use it to decide whether a capped paid test is worth running. These figures are examples, not Protection Connect results.

To test a seller’s claims, see how to check exclusivity yourself and how to run a fair paid trial.

Searches for free life insurance leads for agents mostly return US pages. In the UK, “free” leads usually come with a job at an advice firm or a place in a network, and the cost can land in your commission split or clawback; the FCA’s interim report found mortgage network members usually bear their own lead costs. Before you sign, read our questions to ask about jobs that come with leads.

When do free leads stop being cheaper than buying?

Free stops being cheaper when a source’s cost per policy, counting your hours, passes that of comparable bought leads, or when you need more volume than your own channels give. For referrals and reviews, the main cost is your time:

Some or all of that commission can be clawed back if the policy lapses within the clawback period, usually two or four years. These figures are examples, not Protection Connect results. For a channel you pay to promote, use the calculator and open “Add your time and tools” to enter your hours.

Calculator

Promoted posts or bought leads? Cost per enquiry

For a channel you pay to promote: enter your spend and hours, then compare each enquiry’s all-in cost with a bought lead.

Monthly ad spend in pounds

£

Average cost per click in pounds

£

Costs per click vary widely by search term and area; use the figure your own account shows.

Clicks that become enquiries as a percentage

%

How many visitors to your landing page leave their details.

Add your time and tools

Hours a month running it

Campaign management, landing pages, compliance checks.

Value of an hour of your time in pounds

£

Software and tools a month in pounds

£

Landing page builder, call tracking, CRM.

Price of a bought lead in pounds

£

What a comparable exclusive lead costs you.

Your all-in cost per lead

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Clicks a month

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Enquiries a month

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Ad cost per enquiry

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Monthly cost all in

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• Generate your own–
• Buy a lead–

Illustrative calculator: default figures are examples only. It costs promoted posts or ads plus your time; for referrals and reviews, use the table above. It does not cost compliant promotions, consent capture or data protection work.

Illustrative example: £300 of promoted posts at £2.50 a click brings 120 visits and, at 5%, 6 enquiries. Add 15 hours at £40 and £60 of tools, and the month costs £960, or £160 per enquiry against £45 for a bought lead; cut your hours to five and it falls to about £93. These figures are examples, not Protection Connect results.

The calculator compares cost per enquiry, so divide each result by your conversion rate before comparing cost per policy.

Paying for leads is a normal cost in protection, not a failure of free channels. For the small sample of protection specialists in the FCA’s interim report, lead generation plus staff costs came to about 30% of gross commission; the combined figure doesn’t show how much went on leads alone. To decide what a bought lead is worth to you, see the most you should pay for a lead, our lead budgeting guide and whether bought leads pay at your numbers.

Starting out? Our guide for advisers starting out with leads sets out a first 90 days. If you are an appointed representative, check your principal’s rules on introducer payments, marketing sign-off and approved lead sources first.

Does Protection Connect offer free leads or a free trial?

No. You pay per enquiry: balance first with a saved card; otherwise, in full by card. The minimum price per enquiry is £50. Creating an account and getting verified cost nothing.

We supply only FCA authorised firms and their appointed representatives. Enquiries come from people who asked to be contacted on our own websites, LifeAdviser and 50Life, and each enquiry goes to one broker only.

On LifeAdviser and 50Life there is no contact tick. A notice under “Get my quotes” says their details may go to one FCA-authorised adviser firm, or one of its appointed representatives, that buys enquiries through Protection Connect and may contact them about their enquiry. The firm pays us a fee for the introduction, at no extra cost to the customer. Each purchased lead records its source and the contact methods they agreed to. Say who you are when you call, mention LifeAdviser or 50Life and contact them only about their enquiry. Check with your compliance adviser how PECR applies, including TPS screening before calls and consent naming your firm before any marketing email or text.

To keep a first test capped:

• A daily cap. Set a daily limit for optional automatic buying.
• A clear price. See each lead’s price before you buy.
• Pause any time. If you close your account, unused balance is paid back within 14 days, less anything you owe.

More: how UK firms buy leads from us and how it works.

Questions advisers ask about free life insurance leads

Sources and further reading

1. Mortgage Solutions: Protection lead generation reliant on existing customers and remo protection reviews fall, AMI reveals (November 2025)
2. FCA: Distribution of pure protection products to retail customers, market study interim report (MS24/1.4), January 2026
3. FCA: Pure protection market study, consumer research summary (2025)
4. FCA Handbook: PERG 5.6, regulated activities in insurance distribution, including introducing
5. FCA: FG21/1 Guidance for firms on the fair treatment of vulnerable customers (February 2021)
6. FCA: Financial Services Register
7. SRA: Code of Conduct for Solicitors, paragraph 5.1 (referrals and introductions)
8. Google: Maps user contributed content policy, prohibited and restricted content
9. ICO: Glasgow-based energy company fined £160,000 for making unsolicited marketing calls (May 2026)
10. ICO: Statement on the commencement of the Data (Use and Access) Act (February 2026)