Two product launches and a lot of hot cross buns
With two Providers announcing some exciting product developments, last week was a busy one for the industry.
The first announcement came from Legal and General. Making some substantial changes to their critical illness plan with some welcomed additions to improve their children’s cover, increase flexibility and update some key definition wordings.
You can read the insight article from Adam Higgs detailing what has changed and, with the help of our panel of doctors explain what it means for your clients.
The changes implemented by Legal & General, overall are positive. The increase in the amount paid for Child CI Extra claims will provide greater support for parents going through extremely tough times and the increased flexibility provided through the Guaranteed Insurability Options will hopefully help more clients maintain cover levels relevant to their situation. Simplification of critical illness wordings is something that our panel of doctors, the ABI and insurers may not agree on, however in Legal & General’s case we genuinely applaud them for being brave enough to be the first insurer to implement a lower grade thyroid cancer exclusion. Watch this space as we now expect other insurers to follow suit.
We now move onto Guardian. And hot off the press, they have confirmed that their highly anticipated Income Protection plan has been launched today. Guardian announced to the industry last week of their intent to launch the new product over the coming weeks. Great news that this is now available.
One of the biggest features of the plan is the adoption of own job definition for all policy holders and they will not be offering an activities of daily living definition. Guardian will also enable advisers to offer the same child CI cover alongside Income Protection. This has been a positive feature that Guardian have offered children’s CI cover not only as an optional add on to their critical illness cover, but within their life only cover as well.
We have always been a big fan of being able to add child CI to non-CI products and this will provide more competition in this area where Vitality, LV= and Cirencester all provide varying elements of child cover.
Read some more of the key features on the new income protection plan from Guardian here.
We hope everyone enjoys their Easter breaks, some time to rest and recharge, indulge in hot cross buns and plenty of chocolate!
