Surely, the life insurance brand from Certua Life, has teamed up with employee benefits platform Heka to bring flexible life cover directly to Heka’s members. The company says it’s the first new protection focused life insurer authorised in the UK in almost 20 years.
Under the deal, employees at companies that use Heka can set up individual life insurance in minutes, with cover starting from £5 a month. And unlike a typical policy that gets bought once and forgotten, Surely’s cover can be reviewed and adjusted at every renewal.
The partnership is a direct response to the FCA’s Pure Protection Market Study interim report, published in January 2026, which found that 72 percent of identified protection needs in the UK go unmet, mostly because consumers don’t realise they need cover and are never prompted to think about it. Surely is betting that sitting inside a platform members already trust for wellbeing, one covering mental health, fitness, nutrition, fertility, menopause, learning and financial wellbeing, will keep it engaged with customers as their needs shift over time.
“Most people who need life insurance are never offered it, and what is offered rarely fits the life it’s meant to protect,” said Tom Williams, CEO and founder of Certua Life. “Heka is the natural place to change that: a platform its members already use and trust to look after their wellbeing. From today, they can protect the people they love in the same place, with cover shaped around their own lives and built to change as their needs do.”
Alex Hind, CEO and founder of Heka, said it was Surely’s flexibility that made the partnership click. “Most life cover is fixed on the day it’s sold and never looked at again, while people’s circumstances keep moving,” he said. “Surely is built to be revisited as life changes, which is the same principle the rest of Heka runs on.”
Herald View: The 72 percent protection gap looks like a distribution problem as much as a product one, and Surely is betting the fix is proximity rather than persuasion. Put cover inside a platform people already open for wellbeing, and the sale happens without anyone needing to be talked into caring about life insurance. The real test is whether renewal linked, adjustable cover actually gets revisited, or just gets ignored like everythi