Bulletin 18, 2007
Round up
3 - the number of Life Assurance rate changes announced since the last bulletin (FP, Zurich & Scot Eq)
3 - the number of Life Insurance Awards won by LifeSearch last week
4 - the number of Life Insurance and protection Awards won by Pru Health last week
4 - the number of health events in November, including mouth cancer awareness week
14% - the amount of LifeSearch life insurance and protection applications where Axa is the recommended office (up from just 1% 12 months ago)
251 - the number of children's critical illness claims paid by Scottish Provident between 1996 - 2006
Life Insurance Protection and car bonnets
Ever heard the life insurance and protection car bonnet analogy? It goes something like this...
Buying life assurance and protection is like buying a car because consumers don't need to know what is under the bonnet. When buying a car they just need to know that the car will move in the right direction when they put their foot down and protection is the same.
It sounds simple, logical even. But is it?
The trouble with this over-used excuse to defend non-advised sales of complex products, is that when the car doesn't move you take it to the garage to get it fixed. When your life insurance and protection policy doesn't pay out there is no protection garage to turn the product you bought into the one you needed.
Comment of the week
"The Life Insurance and Protection arm of AXA has seen rapid growth this year as we continue to expand our position in the market. Improvements to our life insurance and protection products, such as the inclusion of total mastectomy cover in our critical illness insurance policies, means our sales team has been dealing with a greatly increased number of IFAs requesting information. To build on this success, and to continue to offer a good service, we’re delighted to be expanding our sales team. This will support the growth of our Life Assurance and Protection business in 2008 and, hopefully, contribute to closing the vast life insurance and protection gap that exists in the UK.”
Jamie McIver,
Director of Protection Sales, Axa
Hero of the week
Norwich Union
Who today announced that it is to extend children’s critical illness cover to all existing critical illness insurance policies. The benefit, which was introduced as a standard inclusion from August 2003 onwards, will be added to all Norwich Union critical illness policies with immediate effect. The cover provides a benefit of £10,000 or 50% of the sum assured (whichever is lower) for each child on the adult’s policy. The policy covers step children and legally adopted children, as well as biological children aged between one and 18 years.
This is the second time in two months when Norwich Union has applied a condition to its critical Illness insurance policy retrospectively. After adding traumatic head injury to its list of critical illness conditions in January 2007, the company extended this to all customers in August this year.
Critical Illness cover insurance retrospection? Hands up all those who said it couldn't be done.
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