Bulletin 14, 2006
Round up
Life insurance rate changes from Royal Liver and Legal and General.
Royal Liver and Standard Life to enter the Pension Term Assurance market next week.
Defaqto says menu plans will help advisers in the life insurance and protection battle with supermarkets.
Up in smoke?
Our latest figures show that the number of smokers buying life assurance and protection is lower than ever before. The ratio is lowest for critical illness cover where just 13% of sales in March were to smokers, compared to 20% for life cover and 22% for income protection. Life insurance premium rates for smokers are approximately double that of non-smokers.
Comments of the week: non-disclosure
'Wouldn't it be easier if:
1. Life insurance companies were more up-front with policyholders about the need to disclose and the consequences of non-disclosure. This includes clear life insurance application forms, sales literature, websites and call centres.
2. The quality of the poorest life insurance and protection advisers improves; so that they are appropriately trained, remunerated and monitored, by both internal and external bodies.
3. Policyholders buying life assurance told the truth.
That way claims would be paid on life insurance policies, people would get their life insurance on risk more quickly and life assurance premiums would remain low.'
Jason Hurley
Head of Business Development, RGA
Hero of the week
Holloway Friendly Society
Who this week joined LifeSearch in bucking the long-term income protection trend by announcing record results for 2005.
The company reported more than 20% premium growth on income protection sales for last year whilst industry wide sales income protection sales continue to fall.
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