Protection Guru Awards 2024: Deadline Extended
If you thought you missed your chance to submit an entry for the esteemed Protection Guru Awards 2024, there’s good news! Although the official closing date was Friday 17th May, the overwhelming demand for an extension has led to the deadline being pushed back by another week to Sunday 26th May. This extension gives you the perfect opportunity to ensure that you or your colleagues are recognized as industry leaders.
Don’t miss out on this chance to gain recognition for yours and your colleagues outstanding contributions to the industry. Submit your entries and showcase the exceptional work that you and your team have accomplished, the Protection Guru Awards are the perfect platform to celebrate your achievements. To submit your entry visit 2024 Protection Guru Awards
AIG add clarity to Heart Attack Definition
In other news, AIG has today made some minor adjustments to their heart attack definition to enhance clarity and simplify the terms for policyholders. These changes aim to make the definition more straightforward and easier to understand, ensuring that customers have a clear comprehension of what constitutes a heart attack under their policies. Here’s what our Doctors had to say:
“AIG has recently reversed their modification to the Critical Illness insurance wording that had added an additional requirement for “typical clinical symptoms,” such as characteristic chest pain, for heart attack claims. These changes were originally aligned with the ABI minimum standards guidance.
From a medical perspective, the requirement for “typical clinical symptoms” is both restrictive and potentially outdated. Heart attack symptoms are diverse and can manifest differently across individuals, making it problematic to rely on a narrow set of symptoms for diagnosis. While chest pain is commonly associated with heart attacks, a wide range of other symptoms—including pain in areas other than the chest, dizziness, sweating, shortness of breath, nausea, and coughing—can also indicate a myocardial infarction. Modern medical guidelines advise against categorising heart attack symptoms as “typical” or “atypical” to avoid missing diagnoses that do not conform to the classic presentation of chest pain.
In light of these considerations, our “Designed by Doctors” research, which reviewed the ABI wordings and suggested updates to align with modern clinical practice, provides a crucial perspective on this issue. We stated:
“The ABI still requires ‘typical symptoms,’ like chest pain, for a heart attack diagnosis in their policy wording. This is a concern, especially in light of recent medical research. Traditional symptoms such as chest pain are no longer seen as universally applicable indicators of a heart attack. Various factors—including the patient’s gender, age, and other existing health conditions—can influence how a heart attack manifests. Notably, up to 30% of individuals who have a heart attack experience no chest pain at all. In modern clinical practice, while symptoms are still considered and used in criteria for making a diagnosis, they are not mandatory for confirming a heart attack. The ABI’s requirement for ‘typical symptoms’ is, therefore, outdated and does not reflect current medical understanding. This could result in some people not being covered by their insurance for a very real and serious medical condition.”
We suggested that the inclusion of “typical clinical symptoms” may inadvertently perpetuate outdated medical stereotypes. This discrepancy between clinical practice and insurance criteria underscores the need for insurance policies to evolve in tandem with medical understanding. Adjustments to policy wordings, such as considering a broader array of symptoms and making symptoms part of an ‘OR’ rather than an ‘AND’ criteria, are essential steps towards ensuring that coverage accurately reflects the complexity and variability of medical conditions like heart attacks.
Initially, we were disappointed to see that AIG had reverted to the ABI’s wording earlier this year. However, we are now pleased to see that AIG has reversed these changes. We suggest that the ABI also consider a review of their wording to better align with current medical standards and understanding.”
